About Citizenfour
In November 2014 I traveled to South Carolina to work on a villa rehab project over 4 days. It was cold and I alone and bored out of my mind so I looked at the list of movies playing. At a small independent movie theater that I’d never been to before I read about Citizenfour and it sucked me in. Almost any movie or story about Government corruption, after what I’ve learned, makes me an easy mark.
When I got to the movies there were a total of 4 of us there and when the movie started I’ve got to tell you I was mesmerized. The story about the deception and the total usurpation of our fourth amendment rights blew me away and as I heard more I got concerned.
Loss of liberty can be fleeting and before my very eyes I was shocked to learn that much of it had already been lost. Do we, as citizens, have any privacy rights left at all? For three more days after the movie while I was alone and I felt isolated because I hadn’t seen the movie with anyone and couldn’t discuss it. Was I overreacting? Was the Government’s overreach as bad as the movie reported?
When I got back home I put out feelers to all of my friends to see if they had heard about the movie or seen it during the one week run at the Esquire (in Cincinnati). No one had.
Since seeing the movie last year, and after watching it again, my concerns if anything are heightened. If two Generals can stare Congress in the face and lie to them and not be held accountable for their lies and deceit anything is possible. When I look at the Orwellian ability of the Government to tie together our metadata it causes me great concern as I look to the future.
When EmpowerU shows Citizenfour next week I’ll be curious to find out what you all think. Is Edward Snowden a Patriot or a Traitor (we’ll take a vote)? Who is right in this argument—Chris Christie who favors National Security or Rand Paul who sticks with Privacy and the Bill of Rights (4th Amendment)?
The one defining fact for me is wondering what people would have done 20-30 years ago, before email, if we found out the Feds were opening our snail mail, putting certain of us on a watch lists and tying our personal data to possibly be used against us. Such an action would have created, I believe, an outrage of national proportions beyond anything we have ever known. Where is that outrage now?