Snowden vs. Hollywood

1 Karl Popper In 2013, following Julian Assange’s Wikileaks disclosures of Bradley (later Chelsea) Manning’s military logs, and not forgetting the revelations of Thomas Andrews Drake, Mark Klein, Thomas Tamm and Russ Tice, the Guardian scooped insights from an NSA insider, Edward Snowden, in which he revealed, through leaking documents to an investigative journalist team, that the NSA has been systematically collecting records on every phone call and email every American makes, has set up an surveillance program ‎which includes reviewing the content of emails, internet searches and chat rooms of foreign nationals overseas (including, notoriously, Angela Merkel), tracks cell phone location data and email address lists from outside the US on a vast scale, has hacked into overseas links between Google’s and Yahoo’s data hubs to accumulate enormous amounts of data subject to no statutory or judicial limits, and has cooperated with Britain’s GCHQ to exploit loopholes that allow NSA to do things GCHQ could not and vice versa. [...]the attempts to argue that post 9/11 government policy has been morally wrong is spectacularly undermined by M’s proclamation to Blofeld that he’ll be detained without trial under the post 9/11 act which denies his rights to face the judiciary in a fair hearing with the implication/joke being that he will no doubt be subjected to “enhanced interrogation”. During the making and release of the film Trump had not yet won the presidency but with this clip the film offers an additional degree of pointedness that could not have been fully recognized at the time of filming —if the progressive and intellectual powerhouse that was Obama was not responsive enough to civil liberties for Snowden’s liking then the populist rantings of the newly incumbent president, when combined with the gangster leadership of Putin, leaves the viewer in state of considerable unease about the prospects for Snowden’s ability to return to the US on his own accord to a fair and open trial. Which is why, rather than publishing these on my own, or putting them out openly, I’m running them through journalists. Because clearly I have some strongly held views, are removed from that equation, and the public interest is being represented in the most responsible manner” (from Citizenfour).