This documentary, directed by Laura Poitras, covers her visit to Hong Kong in 2013 to meet a whistle blower called “citizen four” who turns out to be the infamous Edward Snowden. She filmed her encounter with Snowden and the results are riveting. I was on the edge of my seat for much of the film, just as I would have been for a fictional spy thriller.
Regardless of whether you think Snowden is a patriot or a traitor no-one can deny the fact that we now live in a mass surveillance society. I think our Western governments want us to vigorously debate the rights or wrongs of Snowden’s behaviour because it distracts us from seeing the elephant in the room, i.e. that mass surveillance is now taking place.
Normally at this point someone says “if you haven’t done anything wrong then you don’t have anything to worry about”. This argument has merit given the relatively benign Western governments that currently govern us, but what happens if the next government or the one after that is much less benign? What if they put democracy on hold for some manufactured reason, e.g. a security crisis that makes a free and fair election impossible? We the citizens of our Western countries will be powerless to oppose our new dictatorial governments. Our every contact with other humans will be monitored, making it impossible for us to organise opposition.
As a teenager in the 1960s and a young man in the 1970s I grew up in a world where we protested if we saw that a wrong in society needed to be righted. We observed what mass surveillance did to the repressed peoples of the Soviet Union and its subservient allies and we were grateful that we lived in the free world. 50 years later we are going down the same road as the Soviet Union and the protestors are thin on the ground and have very small voices. George Orwell’s “1984” is happening; he just got the date a bit wrong.
For these reasons I am greatly in favour of films like “Citizenfour”. They provide food for thought, even if the majority of the population is only interested in nutrition-free takeaways.
Nigel.
PS. You may be interested to know that my country New Zealand, as a member of the “Five Eyes”, is a significant contributor to mass surveillance. You can read about Five Eyes here.
Regardless of whether you think Snowden is a patriot or a traitor no-one can deny the fact that we now live in a mass surveillance society. I think our Western governments want us to vigorously debate the rights or wrongs of Snowden’s behaviour because it distracts us from seeing the elephant in the room, i.e. that mass surveillance is now taking place.
Normally at this point someone says “if you haven’t done anything wrong then you don’t have anything to worry about”. This argument has merit given the relatively benign Western governments that currently govern us, but what happens if the next government or the one after that is much less benign? What if they put democracy on hold for some manufactured reason, e.g. a security crisis that makes a free and fair election impossible? We the citizens of our Western countries will be powerless to oppose our new dictatorial governments. Our every contact with other humans will be monitored, making it impossible for us to organise opposition.
As a teenager in the 1960s and a young man in the 1970s I grew up in a world where we protested if we saw that a wrong in society needed to be righted. We observed what mass surveillance did to the repressed peoples of the Soviet Union and its subservient allies and we were grateful that we lived in the free world. 50 years later we are going down the same road as the Soviet Union and the protestors are thin on the ground and have very small voices. George Orwell’s “1984” is happening; he just got the date a bit wrong.
For these reasons I am greatly in favour of films like “Citizenfour”. They provide food for thought, even if the majority of the population is only interested in nutrition-free takeaways.
Nigel.
PS. You may be interested to know that my country New Zealand, as a member of the “Five Eyes”, is a significant contributor to mass surveillance. You can read about Five Eyes here.
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