CitizenFour, filmmaker Laura Poitras’ latest documentary, opens with her dark silhouette reading the first anonymous emails from who would turn out to be former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The highly anticipated documentary, opening in select theaters Friday, gives an intimate view of what life was like for Snowden — a man who fusses with his hair before he goes out, cloaks himself in a red towel to enter passwords, and impassively watches a Selena Gomez music video — in a small hotel room in Hong Kong in the eight days when Glenn Greenwald’s news reports of the NSA dragnet surveillance programs first hit.
Poitras told a closed press screening that the film reflected meeting and working with Snowden as “very much so what I experienced. His reasoning, his motivation, and his decisions,” she said. “There was a very palpable sense of fear going to Hong Kong, it felt risky. It felt risky, and it was obvious that he was taking enormous risk, but also the journalism felt risky.”
Poitras said she was inspired to make CitizenFour after reading a quote from former NSA crypto-mathematician William Binney in Jane Mayer’s New Yorker 2011 piece on Thomas Drake who was facing trial. “He said something along the lines of ‘I want to apologize to the American people for the tools that I built that are now being used against them,” Poitras said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard people from the NSA go on record…It was the first step of making this film.”
After the screening, Poitras spoke with ThinkProgress about being pulled into the story, the measures she had to take to avoid surveillance, and her optimism that the system can be reformed.
The following Q&A; has been edited for flow, clarity and brevity.Edward Snowden has sort of become this icon, a poster boy for privacy. Do you think there’s a difference between Snowden the man depicted in your film and this privacy spokesperson he’s become since the document revelations last year?
I guess what I’m interested in is Edward Snowden, what he did and why he did what he did. As far as icon status, it’s external to the film. I don’t think it was his intention to become an icon.
What I’m trying to do in CitizenFour is document what happened with this meeting in Hong Kong, which is an extraordinary set of circumstances where we had a source who made a decision to come forward. I was interested in this journalistic encounter. So that’s the focus of the film, looking at a person who makes a decision in their life — a point of no return.
You said you were looking at this from a journalistic perspective, but you were also thrust into it. In some way, you became part of Snowden’s world at the time. How did that affect your life and the outcome of the film?
I was sort of pulled into the story because Snowden contacted me, and I’ve been documenting the post-9/11 years for the better part of a decade. In 2006, I was put on a secret government watch list. So I kind of, in a way, became pulled into the history I was documenting. So the first film [‘My Country, My Country’] is not at all from any suggestive point of view, but I filmed the Iraq War and I intentionally didn’t want to put myself in it because I wanted people to empathize with the Iraqis I was filming. And then over time, I sort of got pulled into the narrative, the history that was unfolding.
So it seems like your personal experiences and also the events depicted in the film have changed your life. How did that impact the film and you in the days and year afterward?
Being put on the watch list did impact the film in certain ways. The one thing it taught me to be more secure about my communication. Because I felt like I couldn’t trust my computers, I started using encryption so I could communicate securely. So by the time Snowden contacted me, I had a lot of experience using encryption and how to protect source material. And I was aware of some of the capabilities, not all of the capabilities, that governments have to surveil communications. So there’s that.
And I guess I also got a sensitivity to the chilling effect of state surveillance. The most concrete example of that was in the fall of 2012, before I was contacted by Snowden, I relocated to Berlin so I could edit because I didn’t feel confident I could secure my source material in the U.S. crossing the border. Especially since I’ve had my electronics confiscated at the border. So it kind of speaks directly to the chilling effect that this kind of secret surveillance has, as well as the government increasing crackdowns on whistleblowers and on journalists doing national security reporting.
There’s a sense of paranoia in the film, with worry about phones being tapped and passwords being recorded. Was that intentional or was it an accurate depiction of how you felt in the room?
Paranoia is not the term I would use because I think paranoia refers to people who don’t actually have anything to protect against. In this case, we were talking about the NSA, so I don’t think what you actually see in the room — Snowden covering himself to put in his password — was at all paranoid, I think it was him being careful. And I think also as journalists, when we were doing work-in-progress streamings, we were asked to take our phones out of the room, particularly my phone. You know because I had been doing this reporting for so long, I think it’s right to assume some of my communications aren’t private as other people’s.
We know that the government subpoenaed the phone records of the AP. We know that the government [named] James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in the story that he did. So we know that journalists are being targeted. So I don’t think taking precautions, and using anonymous email addresses, is an act of paranoia at all. It’s being journalistically responsible in the digital age.
Privacy and surveillance are clearly the major themes running through the film. What policy changes would you like to see that could ensure everyday citizens’ rights? Do you think change is possible in the current system?
Of course I think change is possible, and I think we always have to believe that. I live in Germany and eastern Germany used to be controlled by the Stasi. Now, Germany is a place where they really protect privacy rights. So of course I believe it’s possible to shift what the government is doing.
One thing that’s been criticized is the interpretation of the Patriot Act the government is using to collect the metadata, the call records of all Americans. I think that is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, and it’s being challenged. I think the mentality of the NSA through this bulk dragnet surveillance and retroactive querying is very disturbing. I think it should be reined in and that, in general, the public has a right to know more about what the government is doing in terms of security and surveillance.
There has been some movement with Congress and the Administration in introducing reforms. Is that enough with the current system? Or does there need to be a seismic shift in leadership?
Right. I think there are some people in the intelligence community that have been so critical, like Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). [They] should tell us more. The public should know more because I still think that we haven’t seen the policy shifts that really change the landscape. I do think that what we’re seeing, which is positive, are technological shifts. Companies realizing customers want privacy and providing encryption to do that. So I think we’re seeing a growth in that part of the industry, with secure communications and tools customers can use that are easier to use than PGP email, where there is a little bit of a learning curve. And what we’re going to see is companies coming forward, providing encryption that is easier to use.
I think it’s going to be something that’s behind the scenes. Like when you go check your bank balance, that’s an encrypted communication channel. You don’t have to do anything special to keep your passwords to your bank accounts or private transactions online from being broadcast. What needs to change is to make it easier for people with basic email communication to be encrypted behind the scenes so customers don’t need to learn new skills. It should be seamless. And I think there’s a movement in that direction.