This was chosen as my Old Year's Night film simply because the video shop had slim pickings ...Queen of Katwe not yet out. I must have been in a cloud as I had my nose deep in books during the whole hoohah with the Snowden scandal, coming soon after Wikileaks and mixed up in my mind with the abominably-treated Manning youth. While I appreciate the dangers that operatives would have been exposed to in 'the field'; on the whole I welcome an airing of Big Brother techniques if only so that those on their supposedly high moral horses can see that they are no better than those they are purporting to judge!
I thought the film tried to be fair and give voice to poor Mr Snowden whose life got tumbled up, following his revelations of the extent to which we are all electronically tracked. I remember seeing a 60 minutes clip about how certain key words can be picked up and investigated but didn't realise the extent of the gross invasion of privacy until being interested enough to follow through with Mr Snowden's interview in Citizenfour on You Tube. So yes, great to have readily accessible information but bad that at anytime someone can have access to the fact that I viewed it and extrapolate God Knows What from that information.
Mr Snowden was portrayed as someone who believed in his leaders until he got in there and saw it was not subject to rigourous checks and balances - with innocent people as collateral - rather like the policewoman in Whistleblower and his concern was that if it got out of hand, the machinery would be too big to stop. I came to the conclusion he was a brave, intelligent person and am sorry some view him as a traitor as in the first 40 minutes of Citizenfour, when he handed the documents over to responsible journalists, he did tell them to try and not endanger other people lives with their revelations; and thought what a shame it was that the US could not find a 'slot'/position to use him as part of a check + balance system. Pretty similar to where we are heading here now- no explicit criticism allowed.
As it was, I was surprised that he managed to hold interviews for several days in a hotel room in Hong Kong, assuming he was still using his passport to travel and check in.
Ironically, today a news item came out that Donald Trump was of the opinion that really important things should be hand-delivered by courier! We really come to full circles eventually! I think this must be the first thing that I have read about Trump that indicates he has a smidgen of common sense.
Here is a prescient observation: http://on.msnbc.com/2dEJrrz
There is a part when he comments about the ignorance of civic knowledge leading to the loss of democracy
I thought the film tried to be fair and give voice to poor Mr Snowden whose life got tumbled up, following his revelations of the extent to which we are all electronically tracked. I remember seeing a 60 minutes clip about how certain key words can be picked up and investigated but didn't realise the extent of the gross invasion of privacy until being interested enough to follow through with Mr Snowden's interview in Citizenfour on You Tube. So yes, great to have readily accessible information but bad that at anytime someone can have access to the fact that I viewed it and extrapolate God Knows What from that information.
Mr Snowden was portrayed as someone who believed in his leaders until he got in there and saw it was not subject to rigourous checks and balances - with innocent people as collateral - rather like the policewoman in Whistleblower and his concern was that if it got out of hand, the machinery would be too big to stop. I came to the conclusion he was a brave, intelligent person and am sorry some view him as a traitor as in the first 40 minutes of Citizenfour, when he handed the documents over to responsible journalists, he did tell them to try and not endanger other people lives with their revelations; and thought what a shame it was that the US could not find a 'slot'/position to use him as part of a check + balance system. Pretty similar to where we are heading here now- no explicit criticism allowed.
As it was, I was surprised that he managed to hold interviews for several days in a hotel room in Hong Kong, assuming he was still using his passport to travel and check in.
Ironically, today a news item came out that Donald Trump was of the opinion that really important things should be hand-delivered by courier! We really come to full circles eventually! I think this must be the first thing that I have read about Trump that indicates he has a smidgen of common sense.
Here is a prescient observation: http://on.msnbc.com/2dEJrrz
There is a part when he comments about the ignorance of civic knowledge leading to the loss of democracy
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