In January 2013, an individual identifying himself as “citizen four” contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras requesting her public key for sending encrypted email correspondence.
By February, and through encrypted communication, the man, who turned out to be the former National Security Agency subcontractor Edward Snowden, relayed detailed information to her on NSA surveillance, recommending that she work with other journalists like Glenn Greenwald to reveal it publicly.
In April, Poitras meet with Greenwald, around the same time Snowden declared that he would disclose his identity. The three of them, alongside the Guardian’s Washington defense and intelligence correspondent Ewen MacAskill, met in Hong Kong, where Snowden had fled.
Shortly after, the Guardian and the Washington Post published the first stories from Snowden’s documents on PRISM (the NSA’s program to collect Verizon’s customer data, as well as data from Google, Yahoo, YouTube and Apple, among others), the secret Barak Obama directive ordering the Pentagon to create a list of cyber-attacks targets, and Boundless Informant, the NSA’s massive data collection program.
Following this, Poitras posted her 12-minute video interview with Snowden on the Guardian, which went viral, alongside MacAskill’s printed Q&A. This was the first in a series of encounters that would become the Citizenfour film, dubbed “a 100 percent real life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes.”
Ahead of Mada Masr’s screening of the film on Friday, May 22 in collaboration with Zawya and Motoon, we Skyped with Poitras and asked her a few questions.
Ramy Raoof: Why do you think the Snowden revelations didn’t get much media or political attention in the Middle East, despite there being revelations related to Palestine: Evidence of the NSA providing surveillance support to Israel to facilitate its military operations, particularly those in Gaza, as well as support to Arab governments, including Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, to monitor Palestinian targets?
Laura Poitras: It’s a combination of things, including shortcomings in the reporting itself. We haven’t done enough reporting on what’s happening all over the world. If I were to go back and do things differently, I would look into how to scale the reporting to reach more countries. Sometimes stories have also taken a long time to be produced.
We haven’t done enough reporting on the region. Private surveillance companies like Finfisher have been active in Egypt, but I think it was already kind of assumed that these governments are paying attention, and that there is an active internal security force that is looking at what citizens are doing — particularly those who might be engaged in political action — as opposed to the context of the US, where people were surprised. Maybe the surprise in the US was naïve, and I think some of the shock was genuine, because we do have the Fourth Amendment and you need suspicion or a warrant before doing this kind of bulk action. I think in Egypt, if you are an activist, you know that the government is paying attention. Also, there is so much going on in terms of what the government is doing that maybe this is not a top priority. What do you think?
Lina Attalah: I think you are right. The fact that we function under an already authoritarian regime makes it less of a shocking realization to learn that the government is spying on us. But I think there is an increasing interest in acquiring information on how this is happening. Also, with us increasing activity online, there is a growing parallel interest from the government to regulate the internet and watch over it wholesale, either through legislative mechanisms or through mass surveillance tools. And accordingly, people are becoming increasingly wary about the ways in which their privacy is being consistently breached.
LP: I think it’s true. I came to Egypt in May 2011 with Jacob Appebaum, and I met with people who took part in the revolution. That historical moment of public outrage from the tech companies working with the government to try to stop the revolution was interesting. It was a moment where people realized that the tech companies had decided to align themselves with the government, and the government lost in that case.
RR: How much do you think there is a relation between the intelligence community in the US and that in Egypt?
LP: I think we know that the relationship is very close, right? I can’t go country by country and say they are doing this and that, because I haven’t been reporting from these countries. The US has third-party partners. I just published something with Jeremy Schahill in which I talked about how they are relying on facilities in the Middle East to fly their drones over the Middle East. We know that there are many countries in the Middle East that are third-party partners with the NSA, Saudi Arabia being one of them.
LA: Let me go back to the film and ask you a few questions about it. What is the link between your two other documentaries, My Country, My Country, and The Oath, and how do you consider them a trilogy?
LP: All of them are connected to trying to understand post-9/11 America. My filmmaking is based on a certain premise. If you spend time with people who are confronting issues and understand what they go through, you can understand the bigger issues. Through this body of work, I am interested in showing the human face of the US war on terror. I am also interested as a documentary filmmaker in creating a record, in going to places and having images that can serve to inform the public, and also provide a lasting record for the future.
When I was watching the news for the build up to the Iraq war, there was a horrifying precedent of this unilateral military force against a country that you suspect might want to do you harm. This is really the framing of the war, not to mention that the actual premise of the war was based on false information. Watching the news, the coverage was a total disconnect between what the war was like on the ground, and what the US was getting in terms of information, so we were getting a lot of body counts of suicide bombings and we had no idea about what the real consequence was for Iraqis. That film was motivated by a desire to understand the war from the perspective of having been there. When I started the film, I never imagined that 10 years later I would be working on the same themes.
When I was in the process of editing My Country, My Country, I knew that I wanted to make a film about Guantanamo. I still can’t believe that the US has a prison where people were held without ever being charged with anything since 2002. And this prison is in another country, and it’s completely outside the rule of law.
That’s when I understood that this was going to be a larger project about understanding the US and what it is doing. And this is how Citizenfour fits in. A lot of people were asking me, because I made a film in Iraq, if I was interested in the region per se. But I was actually interested in US power in the post-9/11 context, and at that point, I wanted to underline that it is not just about people over there, but people here too. So surveillance seemed an important issue.
If you look at what officials in the early years of the Bush administration thought was going to stop and at what came back to haunt them, it is the domestic spying stuff, because they absolutely knew that it was unconstitutional, and that this would be what they would essentially be held accountable for. There is a famous story of John Ashcroft and how almost the entire justice department resigned over this domestic spying case in 2004. So, I started working on a project on surveillance.
LA: I read about Snowden being concerned about becoming the story, and that’s why he was reluctant to film with you. How did you manage to change his mind, and to what extent do you think Snowden became or didn’t become the story?
LP: Snowden made the decision without telling me that he was not going to hide his identity. So his name would come out, which is different than agreeing to be interviewed. He informed me about this decision during our conversation about whether or not I could film with him, and I think he was responding to what he felt was the way mainstream media works around these issues. He had a pretty sophisticated critique of how mainstream media works, and he knew that as soon as his name got out, the focus would quickly shift away from the issues.
So what I tried to explain to him is that, since he took this decision not to conceal his identity, his motivation to basically put his life on the line was really valuable to understand, because people rightfully wanted to know what this motivation was. Why would somebody risk so much? The documents weren’t going to answer that question. That was my argument.
I gave him strong assurances that I knew what I was doing to protect the material. I also gave him assurances that I would not participate in investigations and that I would be cooperative.
LA: We have a couple of questions from our readers. Do you think Snowden’s reaching out to you, and the way and degree to which his leaks were publicized, gave him some sort of immunity from retaliation, unlike Chelsea Manning, who reached out to the wrong people? Also, why do you think Snowden trusted you?
LP: I think Edward Snowden was paying close attention to what happened in the Manning case and to other whistleblowers. We had the case of the US government targeting a group of NSA whistleblowers and using the Espionage Act against career 30-year-old intelligence officials raising questions about surveillance and its legality. He learned from what happened before. What the US government did in the case of Chelsea Manning was to set the narrative. They were successful in doing so, and sadly the press didn’t challenge it. Snowden chose to seek political asylum, rather than waiting to see what would happen and going through the court system. He looked at other whistleblowers and realized there was no way to have a fair trial. If you get FBI agents showing up at your house, then you know how it’s going to look.
I think he was very suspicious of mainstream media because of a history of suppressing stories. The biggest example is the New York Times not wanting to run a story about wiretapping for years at the request of the government. That’s what attracted him to the work that Glenn was doing. He talked to Glenn because he was seeing a shifting media landscape, and that there are other journalists he could talk to who wouldn’t allow the government to persuade them not to publish. Snowden reached out to Glenn, who couldn’t figure out how to use his PGP encryption, because he knew that he was going to involve multiple reporters.
In terms of reaching out to me, I don’t think I actually provided him with much protection, because as an independent documentary filmmaker, I don’t have the same institutional organizational support that I would have if I worked for someone like the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Also, the importance of the story made it very hard for the government and changed how everything unfolded, because we were not the usual suspects to be breaking stories like this, including using video. So, it’s not only the information that was very scandalous, but we have also been publishing in a different way, and this created more impact and made it difficult for the government to control the narrative and the information.
LA: Did you find the information shocking? The overall realization from Wikileaks, for example, is that it verified information we already knew. Is there a similar effect from the Snowden revelations? Also, the Intercept was created with the intention to continue reporting about the documents. How are you able to mediate the story and keep it in the public consciousness, given that a lot of it has become about Snowden, and also given the fact that the element of shock associated with the first leaks is kind of gone?
LP: In terms of surprising, the answer is yes. Even more pessimistic people weren’t aware of this scale of surveillance and the amount of indiscriminate bulk surveillance over the global internet. There is this retrospective queries time machine that created a graphic representation in real time of the internet to monitor every connected device. This is very frightening.
People are right to critique us to scale up and to keep the publishing going. But I don’t think it’s our job as journalists to stage manage. We are trying to get out the truth, and there is no way I am going to stop reporting because it is less breaking news.
On the Intercept, I am more excited about many projects in the works, and using more images, as opposed to text. We need to keep reporting on the documents. I believe in what we are doing, and it’s exciting and an honor and privilege to work with Glenn and Jeremy, and in a place that is more antagonistic to power. We are a work in progress, and we are building an infrastructure with a broader area of interest, and it’s going to develop.
RR: In the past two years, I met people working in finance and government, and they were willing to speak out and share secret information. But when the military took over, everyone chose silence, as they were too scared to communicate. It was risky to speak to journalists and researchers like us. I wonder what role we should play in this context. What can we do to take into consideration the safety of these people, and yet still disseminate the information we have? Is there a good time and a bad time to publish, for example? What do you think?
LP: The sources are really the ones that the government goes after first. There is some protection for journalists, even if they target us too. These are risks people take knowingly. They are consenting in coming forward because the public should know, and I think our job as journalists who may have more sophisticated knowledge of surveillance issues is to educate sources about not talking about certain things using phones, and to try to bring people up to speed.
In terms of the timing, I feel it’s more about what’s in the public interest. For example, certain things were redacted from the Prism story. Editors who worked on this story felt that some specific operational information should be omitted. I never made a decision based on timing, but this is a different circumstance. I had the source, Edward Snowden, who had already decided to come forward, so I didn’t have to weigh the risk. If he wanted to be anonymous, I would have to factor that in differently. You don’t want to cause harm to your source. That’s one of our journalistic obligations.
RR: How did all the work you have done affect your social and personal life?
LP: This work gave me the incredible privilege to be able to spend time with people who are changing the world. It is the most rewarding thing that you could ever imagine doing, in terms of seeing something in humanity that is inspiring. But it does take a personal toll. I realized that each of the films that I made, I had a physical response to it. After making the film in Iraq, I developed insomnia, which I have until today. My body speaks when something is not safe. That film was about who to trust and who not to trust.
When I started getting the emails from Snowden, I developed tinnitus. At first I was really paranoid and I said there must be a microphone or something in my apartment and it’s creating a high-pitch noise, and I would go to different locations and it would still be there. Then I realized it was me. When Snowden first started emailing me, people I was working closely with and close friends said, if this is going to be a massive investigation, it’s going to pull in everyone in your life. I warned them to step aside and that I wouldn’t hold it against them. But nobody backed away. There was a time when it felt really risky in the summer of 2013, when we knew that the government was trying hard to shut down the reporting. I got support from colleagues and friends when things got bad. I felt people stepped up and did not run away.
RR: You live in New York now. Are you living with the sense that you could be arrested at any second?
LP: I wouldn’t come back if I was living with that sense. I did stay away for almost a year. Before the Snowden revelations, I was on the government watch list and I am still there, even if I am not stopped at border control. So that’s the reason why I was based in Berlin. But I think that for Glenn and I, after a certain amount of time, it would be very hard to come after us, which doesn’t mean they won’t. There are risks, but I determined that the risks had subsided in my case. They haven’t in every case.
RR: Did you find anything that gave you hope in the documents?
LP: Sometimes internal people in the agency started saying what they were doing was wrong, so there was some internal dissent, and I find a lot of hope in that.
LA: How do you perceive your work on the film and the overall editorial operations around the revelations — the extent to which these have influenced the way the United State’s practices control people, and the extent to which you see your work as destabilizing to how governments in general, and the US in particular, practice control?
LP: From a filmmaker’s perspective, the government likes to control the narrative, but they weren’t able to do that in this case — so it has been destabilizing in that sense. If I wasn’t able to show the footage, then certain myths could have come out, like he [Snowden] is in Asia, he is working for so-and-so. When you see the footage, you can disagree with some of Snowden’s choices, but you cannot fabricate a narrative. It is clear that he is concerned about these issues.
So I guess, Glenn’s journalism, the journalism of Wikileaks, trying to get information to the public without using the usual suspects, has helped. If Manning had gone to the Washington Post, it would have had a different impact.
You now have on-the-ground reporting from the Occupied Territories that comes from citizen reporters. You also have the reporting around Ferguson that has drawn attention to this violence. This did not happen because all of a sudden, America woke up to the fact that it is a racist country; but it has been driven by communities who know how to communicate these stories. This is shifting the landscape of how information is shared.
Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted Laura Poitras and has been updated to more accurately reflect her statements.
