Citizenfour

This is a documentary describing the meeting between Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden regarding the latter's whistle-blowing on the NSA (and other agencies) collection and use of personal data from the internet and other sources.

The initial impression I get about Snowden is that his actions were motivated by utopian ideals. That the internet should be a free and open society of equals. That the spy agencies are hoovering up vast quantities of data by subverting the ISP's and other involved companies would hardly be surprising even to the most naive. That's what spy agencies do: spy. Whether it's on each other, us, companies, a man preparing to blow himself up to further his cause, it doesn't matter, except after the fact. In other words, it's what the spying is for that matters and the main accusation of the film against the US government is that this is being done for profit, rather than protection, to screw over other countries rather than to protect itself and others. The argument against this is that security can mean economic as well as physical, but the best economic security is good government and administration, effective diplomacy, not spying.

The film ends on rather a romantic note, with Snowden's girlfriend joining him in Russia despite all the problems she must have gone through to do so.