Citizenfour Violation Of Privacy

Citizenfour Throughout the world, the government scrutinizes citizens without them knowing about it. Devices such as computers and cellphones are being hacked by the NSA and used to monitor everyone’s actions. The documentary, Citizenfour, reveals how the government has expanded its surveillance methods. The government’s secrecy of spying on peoples lives not only declines individual’s privacy, but their freedom as well. *The NSA shouldn’t be spying on citizens because it is a violation of the U.S citizens rights, causes a psychological affect, and they have an inefficient system that wrongfully accuses people *.
The NSA and telecommunication companies are betraying people’s trust by violating their privacy. One major telecommunication company …show more content…
In the documentary, tensions already started to rise when a fire alarm went off, causing fear and paranoia towards the film members. A sense of being controlled by the government and loss of personal privacy can mentally impact all individuals. According to the film, “In fact, Ewen said before, he's like, he's like "I'm never leaving my room...I'm never leaving anything in my room again, not a single machine." I was like, "You've been infected by the paranoia bug” (Citizenfour). Knowing that the government is watching, it triggers people into being more careful online, who they call, and where they travel. They will have a constant fear of thinking they’re doing something wrong. According to Snowden, “So we, we naively kept thinking that could, uh, that could happen. And it never did. But any rate, after that, and all the stuff we were doing they decided to raid us, to keep us quiet, threaten us, you know. So we were raided simultaneously, four of us. In my case, they came in with guns drawn. I don't know why they did that” (Citizenfour). After this occurred, Edward began to hideout, using encrypted emails and becoming extremely suspicious about everything. Evidently, the government does not want anyone observing into NSA’s surveillance and wants people to become oblivious about the government’s undertakings. The government’s corrupt choice of threatening people indicates that they are hiding …show more content…
According to the film, “And metadata, in aggregate, is content. It tells a story about you which is made up facts, but is not necessarily true. So for example, just because you were on the corner and all those data points point to it, it doesn’t mean you committed the crime” (Citizenfour). Metadata obtains information from phone calls, online chats, and can identify someone. This metadata is misleading and can convict someone for a crime they didn’t commit. It can easily ruin someone’s life because of a computer system collected data that seemed suspicious. For example, if someone is making calls to business executives, the metadata can reveal impending corporate takeovers. It can make someone seem extremely suspicious and dangerous, causing many people to not be able to protect themselves. Therefore, many people are immediately and wrongfully accused as guilty. Edward Snowden stated that with this system, the government is capable of taking people’s freedom and basic liberties, so he had to put an end to it before it became worse. The government can potentially cause an intrusion of privacy and abuse their power on the people who trust them to handle their information legally and