As an assignment for one of her university classes my daughter was required to research Edward Snowden. We ended up watching this documentary and Snowden's interview with Brian Williams, reading some books of critical essays, collections of various articles written before and after his information release, etc. This documentary was a wake-up call and made our family ashamed that we hadn't known who Edward Snowden was before the assignment. (We had thought he was involved with WikiLeaks.)

Our family all came to the conclusion that Snowden is a patriot / whistle blower. If you haven’t researched Snowden, you should. He was protecting our freedoms and is now stuck in Russia because the US revoked his passport. His efforts caused Congress shut down a program doing bulk collection of information on US citizens (and others); a federal judge said the NSA phone surveillance program is unconstitutional, etc. Well, it's a long list...

Pretty world-shattering things...

Whatever your opinion on the subject of Edward Snowden and his revelation of details on US government surveillance, you should view this video. There is no question that Snowden committed a federal crime when he revealed this information, and that he knew he was committing a crime. He also knew that this would destroy his career and probably result in a long prison sentence.
Exactly what motivated Snowden and why he did this, knowing the consequences, has never before been completely explained.The responses from the US government, while not being exactly lies, have been misleading and incomplete.
What is sure is that most people, including the officials that held hearings on this have only a vestigial understanding of what metadata is and how it can be used. Every American should view this video to see more clearly both sides of this issue in order to make a fully informed judgement.
In spite of the government's accusations, Snowden was very careful that he did not release any information that would compromise any agent or reveal information on US government surveillance except reveal that it was being done. He gave this information to American journalists, not any foreign country and not for any benefit to himself. The tragedy is that while the US government says that he will receive fair due process of law if he comes to the US, the crimes he is charged with are under a law from world war I, long before today's electronic data communication. This law was intended for spies acting for foreign countries and presumes Snowden is such a spy. There is no legal defense against this law, even if the actions of the government he released are judged to be illegal.
Persons buying this video should make sure that it is rated for their region. Region 0 is nowhere and wilt not play on any DVD machine.
Benjamin Franklin said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

An almost unbelievable story of an American patriot who chooses to fight subversives inside the Federal government to help preserved the personal liberties of American citizens. The lead character is played by the protagonist himself - Eric Snowden. Since in real life Snowden is confined to a single hotel in Moscow, scenes for the movie's action and dialog are very limited. Instead of limiting the value of the story, however, the limitations imposed by the US government's attempts to arrest and silence Snowden simply add credibility and serve to amplify the story's message. The movie's dialog and photography are of decent quality, although generally unremarkable given the severe production constraints. The impression I came away with was like witnessing a surreal scene out of George Orwell's 1984. Actions portrayed in the movie simply cannot happen here because this is America, the land of free and home of the brave. In the end, it becomes very sobering since everyone in the audience already knows of the true story. The filling in of all the details surrounding Snowden's story is what makes the movie so captivating and powerful. Anyone who is interested in liberty, power politics, American history, and social change should consider this movie as a "must see". For all the rest, it's a rare cinematic triumph of a voice crying out in the wilderness in a desperate attempt to defend human freedom and ward off oppression.

Watch, then reflect. Interesting quote from Citizenfour (by Jacob Appelbaum; paraphrased): "What people used to call Liberty and Freedom, we now call "Privacy." And we say in the same breath that privacy is dead. This is something that really concerns me about my generation [i.e., Millennials, by his age]....I think that...when we lose privacy, we lose agency: we lose liberty itself, because we no longer feel free to express what we think....What is surveillance except control?"
Surveillance is the hallmark of totalitarianism.
"We empower governments to protect us in a devil’s bargain from which we will lose in the long run." -- Benjamin Wittes, blog on "what-ben-franklin-really-said," Friday, July 15, 2011.

From the moment all of this began it has made me uncomfortable. On the one hand, someone has dared to attack us in our castle and this is war. Usually our enemies are easy to identify - this is where we live; this is where they live. But this enemy does not engage our military, they engage us at our weakest link - our freedoms. Freedom is a double edged sword it gives us the boldness to create and the boldness to express ourselves without fear of reprisals because we think differently than our government would like us to do. And make no mistake they have used that against us.
Freedom to speak our minds has been under attack like never before in the open if you display a belief that is not popular with crowds on one side or the other you are attacked. But always before you knew they could only go so far because the great equalizer was our constitution. What Snowden did, took a lot of courage and if you think he has benefitted from the results look at his face at the end and the dark circles of his eyes. He is a hunted man and it's not the KGB it is us. Whether the government was right in what they did or wrong in no circumstances did they have the right to not tell us. Journalist like to say "the people have a right to know" and we do. We did not give the government permission to take away our right to know.
Another disturbing aspect that seems to be missed is the brutal truth that Snowden understands. The problem with granting the government this power is getting the power back is nearly impossible and if your fine with Bush having that power you weren't fine with Obama having that power. Will anyone feel fine about what's next?

Tacitus: "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

Not a conventional spy thriller for those that like such things, but rather a story about a clear-thinking, highly intelligent young man with very constitutionally-oriented ideas about what was and wasn't permissible by the government. As an employee of NSA in Hawaii (?), he found that the U.S. was intercepting virtually all information that traveled over the internet, cell phone circuits, and anywhere else that was accessible. This was in violation of established law that closely governed the circumstances under which the government could engage in such behavior. The story is about who he contacted to bring about the worldwide notification that this surveillance was active and that data was being collected from people in virtually all countries and at all levels of society and government.

A great story of moral clarity and bravery, brought to you courtesy of Laura Poitras and Glen Greenwald, the photojournalist and reporter responsible for the dissemination of the information and the creation of this film. In another story of another time, Bob Dylan advised "Bury the rag deep in your face, for now is the time for your tears". This time, however, it's a time for tears AND for jubilation. Tears at the way our constitution is being abused, and jubilation that some are brave enough to fight back despite the risk. Bravo, bravo,bravo!

I can otherwise only describe how much the film moved me by wishing that there were more stars to award.

Excellent! I felt as if I were watching a movie, not a documentary. By the middle of the documentary I was cheering and testifying! My brother and I are going through something very similar. Everything from the fire alarms going off, to the construction workers suddenly showing up and having to write what we say down were reminders of my situation and the persecution we are enduring a the hands of powerful people.

The Constitution is useless against corporate and political powers and organizations. The FBI and CIA's autonomous statuses allows these agencies, and every agency like them, to operate in a non-transparent way that keeps them exempt from investigation or questioning. This only allows for the rampant misuse and abuse of power (J. Edgar Hoover gave us a telling look at how evil the FBI is).

If you take a stand against the government and/or law enforcement, you will see for yourself just how exact CITIZENFOUR actually is. I found it ironic that Obama made statements expressing his displeasure with Snowden's righteous actions and the statement Obama made within the last week claiming that the democratic candidates might want to steer clear of being too liberal in their ambitions (to clean the corrupt government out). CITIZENFOUR clearly shows the inquiring mind why 'cleaning the government out' is exactly what America needs!

What Edward Snowden said is now happening in Massachusetts. We need urgent protection: “Even if you are not doing anything wrong you are being watched and recorded and the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude to where it’s getting to the point you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you have ever made, every friend you have ever discussed something with and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life, and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer. A new leader will be elected, they will flip the switch, say that because of the crisis, because of the dangers that we face in the world, you know, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it and it will be a turnkey tyranny.”