Edward Snowden on CH4 tonight.

Dont know if it'll be anygood, we all know how the msm works!

CITIZENFOUR tells the inside story of Edward Snowden and the mass illegal invasions of privacy by the nsa.

Channel 4 23:05
Channel 4+1 00:05

a reply to: VoidHawk

I am watching the program right now, and advise anyone with the time to spare, to follow suit.

It has to be better than watching The Only Way Is Essex, right?

always wanted to see if its any good... damm i missed it

a reply to: VoidHawk

I hope he also addresses the KGB's disinformation tactics and how KGB forged false "leaks" to demonize american intelligence agencies ever since the Cold War.

Oh wait, he's best friend with ex-KGB member Putin. Ah, never mind.

I've been watching the whole program. I usually flick between the TV, my phone, my computer etc during TV shows, but I've been glued to it since it started - Really fascinating stuff. It's very well put together as well.

It's the first time I've heard Snowden speak first hand about it all, and it's mind boggling.

a reply to: Capitalsource

That was one of the best documentary programmes I have ever seen.

I left the couch only to make a hot water bottle for my mother, and fetch a glass of water, and both of these I did during the advertising breaks.

This documentary deals with arguably the most important scandal of the times in which we live, a scandal to which there has been no acceptable conclusion, for which no one has been held responsible. Some people, many of them right here on this site, had known that something like the structures described by Snowden in his releases, must have existed well before the revelations were made, and were vocal in saying so. It was something that many of us were concerned about for quite a few years previous to the breakage of the spying scandal by the news media.

Many of us were called kooks for even caring whether or not our governments were spying on us, and now it turns out, that indeed, by co-operating with one another, the intelligence communities of allied nations are indeed spying on their own citizens, by getting foreign agencies to do the work for them. Britain's own GCHQ feeds gigantic amounts of information to the NSA and I would imagine that at the intelligence level, there is a great deal of return traffic.

All of this plays into the idea that the individual intelligence agencies which comprise the "five eyes" or the "fourteen eyes" as the allied nations intelligence services are sometimes known, are no longer beholden to the people that they were originally set up to protect, and that should trouble everyone here.

Having watched the documentary, no alarm bells what so ever went off in my head. I watched it looking for two things. Self interest on the part of Snowden, and instability. It was, on a purely selfish level, damned stupid of him to do what he did. He knew it would be the end of what he knew as his life, that it might mean forced separation from some of his closest relations, that it would endanger his liberty, and I would imagine that his mortality probably occurred to him at some point, as being one of the potential costs of making his knowledge public. Self interest therefore, would seem a far fetched motive in his releasing the information that he did, but you never know what might lurk in a mans intent.

However, all I saw was a man who wanted to do the right thing, without endangering specific individuals doing dangerous work. Diligence was applied at all stages, and I think that in terms of the way the data was handled, and the way that he dealt with himself during the interview process was admirable, not to mention the manner in which he reasoned out the legitimacy of his actions. I believe, from watching the documentary, that my initial assessment of his character was right, that he is indeed a patriot, a man who loves his country, and wanted his fellow countrymen to understand the wrong being done to them, in the name of "freedom".

Furthermore, I also believe having seen how he reacted to certain stimuli during the course of the film, that although fatigued and in a very unenviable position, his mental state was one of indignant, restrained, and justified fury, not one of anarchistic and radical, not to mention irresponsible whimsy. He genuinely believes that what he was doing in releasing that information, was the right thing to do for his fellow countrymen, and that it was worth the sacrifice of a great deal, and perhaps his own life or liberty, to make those releases happen.

That was my take on the content which specifically pertained to Snowden himself. With respect to the data, there was nothing in the documentary that was new to me in terms of actual data revealed, because certain elements of this documentary also ended up in the general releases which were published in the news media during the revelations concerned. However, I was not expecting new data of that sort. I got what I wanted from the documentary, which was to hear those discussions between Snowden and the journalists who covered the story with his collaboration, and get a feel of how it all went down.

Ever since I heard of Snowden and the manner in which his information was initially collected, I wanted to have been a fly on the wall so to speak, in that room, as it happened, and the documentary gets me pretty bloody close.

In terms of the way it was put together, I cannot fault the editing, the directing, the production team, or any part of the finishing process which laid out the final piece as it was. All of that being said, I would love to know if there is a video record of the whole of the eight hour total encounter with Snowden, and if so, where I could download or stream it. I get the feeling that for the very same reason as there will have been certain data points redacted from the releases for reasons of protecting the innocent and operatives who might be endangered by data being released, the full eight hours of interview will probably not be available, because there may be within those hours of recorded data, reference to information which would be very unhelpful to operatives whose lives depend on their anonymity.

Still...

A bloody good watch, and I highly recommend anyone who missed it, to go and find it on the Channel 4 website.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I'm glad you feel this way.

Welcome to the club.

a reply to: TrueBrit
Dude, I know stars matter not to you, but have a bucketfull, you have echoed what I'd like to have said but dont have the words for


Something that really hit me was his body langauge!
I've often wondered if the whole snowden thing was staged, but , you cant act that body language!

Way to go MR Snowden

originally posted by: swanne
a reply to: VoidHawk

I hope he also addresses the KGB's disinformation tactics and how KGB forged false "leaks" to demonize american intelligence agencies ever since the Cold War.

Oh wait, he's best friend with ex-KGB member Putin. Ah, never mind.

But thats the KGB's Job! Spying on his own people is NOT Obama's job!

Citizenfour is an incredible documentary.
How anyone can say this man is anything other than selfless and frankly heroic, is beyond me.
He gave up his life to get the truth out - to fight a wrong and an injustice that he saw.
He also seemed like an extremely thoughtful, genuine and decent guy.

Everyone at ATS and in wider society should see this.

originally posted by: stargatetravels

Everyone at ATS and in wider society should see this.

Absolutely agree

I was hoping it'd be on youtube by now so that I could embed it here, but no luck...yet!