Life means life. Even under the new “Just about permanent incarceration or truth in sentencing” bill, I would be a free man. What? Last Tuesday, celebrating our 37th anniversary with a date night (starting with supper at the Pioneer where we had our first date some forty years ago) my wife and I discussed which movie to go and see. In Humboldt: Spongebob- Sponge Out of Water or Fifty Shades of Grey (should have been named Fifty Shades of Jian Ghomeshi) or Saskatoon: The Imitation Game or Citizen Four.
Watching all of the people streaming into our theatre prompted me to stop and ask the proprietor when they were going to show The Imitation Game. The answer was not exactly encouraging, maybe. Even that tepid response was enough for us to select Citizen Four.
The fact we found a parking stall right in front of the Roxy in Saskatoon did not bode well. For a few minutes we were alone. “A private screening” I quipped. A few minutes later, the theatre was filled with a huge crowd, white haired and bald palates glistening in the dark, at least a baker’s dozen besides us. Not exactly a moneymaker for any theatre.
Citizen Four stars Edward Snowden, as himself; Laura Poitras, as herself; Glenn Greenwald, as himself; Julian Assange, as himself as well as selected news bits from CNN, BBC and other news networks. What did we learn? This movie deserved that Oscar for Best Documentary. I do not remember any recent movie where my wife and I discussed what we saw for the entire trip home.
When I first viewed Conspiracy Theory and/or Enemy of the State, I argued, good movies, but you can’t do that in real life. Ha! Was I wrong, really wrong. Today every tweet, every cell phone conversation, every email, everything digital is being scooped up and stored in huge data farms at the Utah Data Center “first facility in the world to gather and house a yottabyte” (a term that can be translated as “alottabytes”.)
Laura Poitras’s documentary did not just reconstruct something after the fact. The film recorded the deed in real time, as she and fellow journalist Glenn Greenwald met Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel. They unleashed a bombshell that shook the world about domestic spying by the NSA. Citizen Four revealed a dramatic saga of political abuse of power. With justified paranoia, Poitras et al brilliantly demonstrated that information is a weapon that cuts both ways. It is no coincidence all of the principals involved now live elsewhere.
There is so much data; no human could ever possibly review it. Instead computers sift through terabytes of information per second searching for code and trigger words. If enough of these words are found, then a real person checks them out. There is even a “Google” like search engine. Your credit card, debit card and cell phone metadata then tell the observer where you are, when you are there, and even who you met. If important enough, drones can be dispatched to observe the target in real time.
The most troubling aspect? Not that governments are doing this; not that they lie to us when they testify before our respective governments; not even that we are willingly allowing our rights, our privacy and freedom to be usurped. Father knows best, and our government has my personal safety at heart (what you don’t know is for your protection: loose lips sink ships.) No, for me what was most egregious was the fact this information is being used for personal gain. (Not just political gain, how Canada spied on Brazil’s mining and industry ministries is but one example.)
Besides the Oscar for Best Documentary, The Guardian and the Washington Post were awarded the highest accolade in US journalism, winning the Pulitzer Prize for public service for their articles on the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities (all based on the leaks of Edward Snowden.) If you do decide to go and see this film, pay cash.
Robert Bandurka
Humboldt, SK
