'Citizenfour' - Edward Snowden, NSA, GCHQ and the death of privacy

There’s a moment about midway through Laura Poitras’ ‘Citizenfour’ which is loaded with such dramatic potency that by comparison any fictional thriller released this year is left looking like hyperventilating melodrama.  It comes as whistleblower Edward Snowden has just revealed himself as the public face of the scandalous intelligence leaks from the NSA and GCHQ. 

 

He stands tentatively gazing out of his hotel window at the Hong Kong cityscape, the urban arena of absolute anonymity juxtaposed with the fact that Snowden is now one of the most famous faces in the world.  He is the news that is currently breaking.  The camera remains trained on his back as he silently contemplates the ramifications of his actions, realising perhaps for the first time that the plate glass window separating him from the world beyond is now symbolic of the barrier impeding him from ever freely re-joining it.

 

Set almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a high rise Hong Kong hotel room, as a unique insight into the life and circumstance of a man surrendering his life as he knows it for a principled cause, ‘Citizenfour’ is easily the most important documentary film of the year, if not the decade. 

Hastily edited and completed in time for the climax of the London Film Festival, the film barely puts a foot wrong in 114 minutes, skating over the surface of such fast-moving events with a prickly nervous adrenaline. It begins with the thin lights of a traffic tunnel sinewing along in rhythm with the bristling static drone of Nine Inch Nails, that appear like the transoms of digital information coursing through cyberspace.  It is a revelatory moment in itself when this mysterious informant steps out from the shadows of his avatar and the cryptic email exchanges between himself and Poitras, and is revealed to be a young, self-assured but slightly edgy American guy  in a hotel room. 

His conviction that his actions are justified and moral is instantly tangible and only gains its legitimacy and strength as the film proceeds. For this is the real Snowden laid bare; eloquent, intelligent and apparently completely unblemished by any egotistical drive for infamy or fame.  The film manages to emphasise the glaring contrast between the very human reality here documented (becoming jittery with paranoia as a hotel fire alarm repeatedly sounds, for instance), and the farcical media portrayals of him being a Chinese and/or Russian spy, and having wantonly exposed swathes of American operatives to immediate danger.

While Poitras remains off-camera, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill initially seem slightly wary of Snowden, perhaps thinking to themselves that the whistleblower is too good to be true.  Indeed as they begin to trust him and he relates the audacious scale and implication of the intelligence networks, you can detect a definite sense of restrained excitement as though already imagining this to be their ‘Pentagon Papers’, their Woodward & Bernstein moment.  Not that I mean to question their motives, but nevertheless as career journalists you can sense them almost imagining the Pulitzer Prize that The Guardian would go on to win for the story.

 

By the time the film is over, you can’t help but leave the cinema and impulsively want to hurl your mobile phone against the nearest brick wall, or embark on a paranoid frenzy like Gene Hackman at the end of ‘The Conversation’.   The sense of hopelessness in the face of such vast and unaccountable power is palpable and inevitably is what fuels the wilful apathy of the masses to this day.  For what is perhaps the most striking and maddening legacy of the whole affair is the deafening chorus of shrugs that the story was met with.

Amongst my personal peer group, I remember angrily arguing to try and elucidate the outrage and indignation that was crystallised by the leaks, and finding myself outnumbered by the meek rejoinders of “what’s so wrong with it?”, “it’s hardly a revelation”, and (the most infuriatingly ovine) “if you’ve nothing to hide, what does it matter?!”

 

Far from being exceptional, this kind of apologia was the default mentality it seemed of the population at large.  It is telling, I think, of the current societal malaise that exposures can be released of an endemic and indiscriminate surveillance far broader and more pervasive than any Orwellian nightmare, unprecedented in the whole of human history, and, far from the chairs on the deck of the ship being rearranged, they barely seem have been budged at all.

 

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, delivered a barefaced lie to the Senate Select Committee in March 2013 on the question of NSA’s civilian data collection, and yet astonishingly remains in his job; President Obama having assured him of his full confidence.  Leaks revealed that the NSA and GCHQ have infiltrated the users of World of Warcraft and Angry Birds; that using the crowbar of coercion they have backdoor entry to major internet companies including Facebook, Yahoo and Google; and, perhaps most insidious of all, have developed a programme of ‘Smurf’ apps that enable high-precision geolocation and devices’ microphones to be activated remotely.

The response of governments was telling in its own way. The US government instantly moved to revoke Snowden’s passport and brand him a traitor on the grounds of having threatened national security. In the UK, the government went to the ludicrously draconian lengths of entering the offices of The Guardian and personally overseeing the destruction of laptops and other hardware that might have contained encrypted materials. That they chose to undermine the principle of a free press in this manner as well as detain Greenwald’s partner David Miranda at Heathrow Airport for 9 hours on spurious grounds of carrying sensitive security information illustrates the deluded panic that they had been thrown into by the leaks.

 

In Germany, the response was relatively muted until it was revealed that Angela Merkel’s phone had been placed under surveillance by US intelligence at which point they assumed the mantel of outrage. This is telling because it demonstrates a lack of adequate concern regarding the privacy of civilians, but plenty when it concerns the highest echelons of power (who surely can’t have been that surprised that foreign interests were trying to spy on them?)

Meanwhile, Putin has mooted the idea of cleaving away from the internet and establishing an exclusively Russian alternative devoid of foreign infiltration.

Whatever the long term ramifications, it’s hard not to see this as being the end times for the internet as we know it; an epoch destined to be seen as a brief Eden-like glimmer when information was freely available and largely unmonitored, when the notion of privacy as a citizen of a western state hadn’t become so tattered and threadbare.

 

 

The close of the film shows Greenwald relaying to Snowden the news that a second whistleblower has emerged, inspired by his brave example. He shows him a figure representing the number of people on the US government’s watchlist, currently under surveillance as a potential threat or suspect. The number is a gargantuan 1.2 million.

Regardless of the extent of any additional leaks, that figure tells you everything you need to know about the heightened state of American paranoia that has possessed them since 9-11, resulting in the impinging upon constitutional rights and liberties on a scale that must have so astronomically exceeded Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorist plotters’ wildest dreams.

The multiplier effect of the metadata from one person’s connections to the next allows for a colossal outreach in the agencies’ dragnet. So if you have, say, 200 friends on Facebook, if you are inexplicably labelled as a ‘potential threat’ for some arbitrary reason, that means they can also access those additional 200 people as well (potential ‘accomplices’ perhaps?).

It is depressing to realise that there is so little prospect of change on this issue of data freedom and online privacy. Sadly, it just doesn’t seem to be of pressing concern to western civilians, who are far more easily distracted with the perennial matters of Europe, immigration, the odd political scandal or inquiry, and the constant crisis with the NHS. But be that as it may, it is reassuring to know that people with ethical principles and courage such as Edward Snowden are willing to come forward to enlighten us as to the crooked and pernicious practices of the powers-that-be, and in that spirit ‘Citizenfour’ is a thoroughly worthy celebration.