CITIZENFOUR
John Young
jya@pipeline.com
Fri Oct 24 15:32:52 EDT 2014
Thanks for the comments.
Screenshots most welcome. cryptome[at]earthlink.net or pointers.
Greenwald's mercenary greed is why only 97% of Snowden docs
have been released. His and cohorts criminal behavior puts citizens
in harms way to protect the natsec apparatus including natsec media.
At 02:58 PM 10/24/2014, you wrote:
>Saw this last night - an obvious must-watch for
>all CPunks. I think it was probably the most
>important documentary film of all time. As Roger
>Ebert said, "itâs as if Daniel Ellsberg had a
>friend with a movie camera who filmed his
>disclosure of the Pentagon Papers every step of
>the way. Or if the Watergate burglars had taken
>along a filmmaker who shot their crimes and the
>cover-up that followed. Except that the issues
>âCitizenfourâ deals with are, arguably, a
>thousand times more potent than Vietnam or
>Watergate." Truly, this is the Snowden story we
>have been waiting for since 2013.
>
>The main revelation of the film, however, is
>what an incredible boob Glenn Greenwald is. I
>had some idea of this after seeing him give an
>extremely disappointing talk earlier this year,
>but I don't think I quite understood how useless
>this guy really is. He's constantly asking the
>wrong questions, displays a technical ineptness
>(to the point of deliberate ignorance) that
>obviously hampers the journalism, and at very
>step shows a very clear desire to keep the
>document cache to himself for careerist
>purposes. At one point Ewen MacAskill brings up
>the idea of there being a Wikileaks-esque
>document explorer, and Ed says that this would
>be the best outcome for the documents, and
>Greenwald quickly dismisses the idea to talk
>about his publishing schedule. I still have
>immense respect for him, but I found it very
>frustrating and quite cringey to watch him treat
>the whole event in news-cycle terms, while
>everybody around him is obviously thinking in
>historical context. For instance, there is a
>moment when they are prepping for Ed's first
>on-camera interview and he asks the reporters
>how much background he should give about
>himself, and they give different answers.
>Poitras asks for as much detail as possible, and
>Greenwald basically says that isn't important,
>just be short so we get a good soundbite.
>
>More importantly, I think the film also misses
>an opportunity to talk about power. This is
>something Edward himself has addressed, but it
>isn't really covered in Greenwald's reporting or
>books, and the only time it's mentioned in the
>film is when Jacob Appelbaum, while speaking
>before a European council of some sort, quite
>astutely comments that surveillance and control
>are one and the same. I think the film should
>probably have spent another hour or so
>investigating, naming and confronting those who
>profit from that control. Other than a few
>choice C-SPAN snippets, the enemy is completely
>faceless, which plays well for the pervading
>sense paranoia which envelops the film, but also
>leaves many questions unasked. Perhaps that's
>left as an exercise for the viewer, but I think
>the general take-away message from both the
>reporting and to a slightly lesser extent the
>film is that any "solution" will be token reform
>of policy and not dismantlement of power structures.
>
>Also, very nice of the Russian government to let
>Ed have his girlfriend back. I didn't know that
>had happened, and it gives a rather unexpected
>happy ending to a film which otherwise made me want to cry desperately.
>
>Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear what you
>lot thought of it. (JY, you should throw a
>torrent up ASAP! I'm sure people will be
>screenshotting and analyzing all of the new document shots the film contains.)
>
>R
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20141024/b18bbd1f/attachment.html>
More information about the cypherpunks
mailing list