New Laura Poitras Film

Risk

Laura Poitras, Academy Award winning director of CITIZENFOUR, returns with her most personal and intimate film to date. Filmed over six years, RISK is a complex and volatile character study that collides with a high stakes election year and it’s controversial aftermath.

Cornered in a tiny building for half a decade, Julian Assange is undeterred even as the legal jeopardy he faces threatens to undermine the organization he leads and fracture the movement he inspired. Capturing this story with unprecedented access, Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle.

  Risk Film

Trailer at the link.

Project X

The NSA's partnership with AT&T is physically housed in an unusual building in New York.

THEY CALLED IT Project X. It was an unusually audacious, highly sensitive assignment: to build a massive skyscraper, capable of withstanding an atomic blast, in the middle of New York City. It would have no windows, 29 floors with three basement levels, and enough food to last 1,500 people two weeks in the event of a catastrophe.

  The Intercept

And then what? Do they start whittling down the population; perhaps using the culls as food?

But the building’s primary purpose would not be to protect humans from toxic radiation amid nuclear war. Rather, the fortified skyscraper would safeguard powerful computers, cables, and switchboards.

Screw the people.

[P]lans describe the structure as “a skyscraper to be inhabited by machines” and say that it was “designed to house long lines telephone equipment and to protect it and its operating personnel in the event of atomic attack.”

[...]

It would house one of the most important telecommunications hubs in the United States [...] operated by the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T.

[...]

[Completed in 1974,] it can be found in the heart of lower Manhattan at 33 Thomas Street, a vast gray tower of concrete and granite [known as the “Long Lines Building”].

[...]

Unlike the many neighboring residential and office buildings, it is impossible to get a glimpse inside 33 Thomas Street. True to the designers’ original plans, there are no windows and the building is not illuminated. At night it becomes a giant shadow, blending into the darkness, its large square vents emitting a distinct, dull hum.

[...]

An investigation by The Intercept indicates that the skyscraper is more than a mere nerve center for long-distance phone calls. It also appears to be one of the most important National Security Agency surveillance sites on U.S. soil [codenamed TITANPOINTE] — a covert monitoring hub that is used to tap into phone calls, faxes, and internet data.

[...]

The NSA’s documents do not state that it can “connect directly to” or “otherwise control” AT&T’s networks, but they do make clear that the agency has placed its own equipment inside TITANPOINTE to tap into phone calls and internet data. It may be the case that the secure room where the equipment is installed is overseen by AT&T’s own engineers or technicians who have a security clearance. One NSA document dated from March 2013 suggests such a relationship, noting that the “corporate sites” the agency collects data from “are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to NSA.”

[...]

Historically, AT&T has always maintained close ties with the government. A good example of this came in June 1976, when a congressional subcommittee served AT&T with a subpoena demanding that it hand over information about its alleged role in unlawful FBI wiretapping of phone calls. President Gerald Ford personally intervened to block the subpoena, stating that AT&T “was and is an agent of the United States acting under contract with the Executive Branch.” Ford said the company was in a “unique position” with respect to telephone and other communication lines in the U.S., and therefore it had been “necessary for the Executive Branch to rely on its services to assist in acquiring certain information necessary to the national defense and foreign policy.”

Watch Project X, a short film by Henrik Moltke and Laura Poitras.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good Post-Oscar Interview with Glenn Greenwald

Fixed.
And here's the link:  http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/glenn-greenwald-on-oscar-win-treason-joke-403273795811

Congratulations to Laura Poitras

Sunday evening in Los Angeles, the filmmaker was honored with the Director's Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. In London, Citizenfour won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Documentary of 2014.

[...]

The accolades come just weeks after the filmmaker and journalist was given the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. "Her films address complex political realities through deeply moving personal stories, allowing viewers to connect emotionally to otherwise abstract issues," the nominating committee wrote. "Her trademark is meticulous research and extensive filming."

  Common Dreams

Also, New York Times TimesTalks live webcast with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greewald & Edward Snowden Thursday, February 12.

That Would Be Awesome

Apologies for the quality. ..it took me a long time to figure out how to do this from my phone.   Couldn't take the time to crop the photo.

UPDATE:  I should have prefaced that with this:  Citizenfour has been nominated for best documentary Oscar.

Frivolous Horace Shit

Attorneys representing a Kansas man filed a civil suit in District Court on Friday last week in which they allege that Snowden, movie director Laura Poitras and others involved in making “Citizenfour” intentionally violated federal law by profiting off of the disclosure of state secrets.

“This is an action on behalf of the American people to seek prompt imposition of the Supreme Court’s essential financial remedy – a constructive trust – to redress unjust enrichment by ensuring that ill-gotten gains are disgorged,” begins the civil action complaint.

[...]

According to the suit, Snowden and the film’s production team ran afoul of a 1979 Supreme Court decision in which the nation’s top justices agreed by a 6-3 vote that First Amendment rights don’t protect Americans from instances in which their speech breaches any “constructive trust” existing between the government and an agent privy to its inner workings. In the case of Citizenfour, the plaintiff — Horace B. Williams, a former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation and a retired Navy officer who once held a security clearance — says Snowden broke his agreement with the US government because he and the film crew will make a “covet financial gain for their misconduct,” namely discussing classified documents in a manner that makes them available to potential audiences of “foreign enemies.”

[...]

Meanwhile, no fewer than two other films concerning the NSA leaker are currently in the works. Last month, The Guardian confirmed that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has accepted the role of Snowden in a forthcoming feature being directed by veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone.

  RT

Looking forward to it.

And wondering about Glenn Greenwald's (possibly defunct) deal with Sony to make a Snowden movie is coming along in light of the latest Sony scandal, including talk that Sony is cozy with the CIA.

Citizenfour

Just saw this Tweet:

Kudos to this theater.  

I had to look up why the MPAA gave the film an R rating:  it's because of the language.  

The f-bomb was uttered, but only a very few times- I can recall only two.  And I guarantee that there isn't a teenager in this country who hasn't heard and most likely used the word many times over who isn't shut in a fundamentalist basement or in a coma.  I hadn't thought of it before in terms of barring people who will be voting soon.

Documentary Recommendation

I got the chance to see Citizenfour yesterday. All I'm going to say is: Go see it if at all possible.  You don't get enough opportunity to see principled, intelligent, brilliant and brave people.  And you'll learn some things you didn't already know.

Citizen Four: Revelation of the Second Leaker

“Citizenfour” unexpectedly ends in startling, quasi-comic dumbshow fashion in Moscow, as Greenwald reveals to a goggle-eyed Snowden the as-yet undisclosed revelations of an even higher-up whistleblower by scribbling words on scraps of paper, promptly read, digested, and just sporadically caught by the camera. The papers are then torn into small squares, with only the word “Potus” clearly visible. Whether this coda records fact or theatricalizes unrealistic speculation remains unclear.

  Variety

This Variety review and a Hollywood Reporter review both talk about this revelation that the second leaker implicates the president in the same manner. Hollywood Reporter says you are “free to believe it or not.”

What are they afraid of? Of course there is going to be scrambling and denial coming from the White House, and perhaps attempts to seriously silence the second leaker. But for all we know about Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, what reason do we possibly have to disbelieve this one item?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Polk Award

.

Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras had earlier cleared immigration at John F Kennedy airport in New York without a hitch as they arrived to share a George Polk Award for national security reporting with Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. The Polk awards are administered by Long Island University. "This award is really for Edward Snowden," said Poitras [...] as she accepted the award in the ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.

[...]

Greenwald said he and Poitras had been seeking information from the US government about whether they were also the subject of an indictment that was under seal.

"They wanted us to have that kind of uncertainty about whether or not they would take action upon our return to the US," Greenwald said, at a press conference following the awards ceremony.

  Guardian

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They're In

US reporter Glenn Greenwald returned to his homeland Friday for the first time since he helped expose Washington's vast electronic spying network, warning that more revelations are yet to come.

Greenwald, who maintains regular contact with fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, flew into New York with filmmaker Laura Poitras to receive a journalism award for their coverage.

[...]

"In my opinion the stories that are the most significant and most shocking and will have the broadest and most enduring implications are the ones we're currently working on," he said.

[...]

Poitras, an award-winning American filmmaker based in Berlin, said she had been stopped nearly 40 times over the last six years at US borders but had no problem on Friday.

[...]

"The fact that we're here is not an indication that there isn't a threat. We know there is a threat," she told reporters. "The reason we're here is we're not going to succumb to those threats."

Greenwald and Poitras shared the George Polk Award for national security reporting with Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, who also covered Snowden's leaks.

  Business Insider

Understanding Edward Snowden

How Edward Snowden went from conservative proponent of US global policing to US most wanted whistleblower:  Very interesting article*, new details.

  Guardian

*"Edited extract from The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World's Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding, published in the UK on Monday by Guardian Faber at £12.99; and in the US on 11 February by Vintage Books."

 

At Amazon

And One Day, There Will Be a Movie. Can’t wait.

You may recall that Glenn Greenwald posted an article some time last year about a woman documentarian who was being repeatedly harassed at customs by the US due to a film she made in Iraq. Her name is Laura Poitras, and a year after Greenwald's article, she and he are colleagues in the Edward Snowden leaks story. The New York Times has just published an article about Ms. Poitras.

In the course of reporting his profile of Laura Poitras, Peter Maass conducted an encrypted question-and-answer session, for which Poitras served as intermediary, with Edward J. Snowden. Below is a full transcript of that conversation.

Peter Maass: Why did you seek out Laura and Glenn, rather than journalists from major American news outlets (N.Y.T., W.P., W.S.J. etc.)? In particular, why Laura, a documentary filmmaker?

Edward Snowden: After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power — the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government — for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism. From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy, but what benefited the institutions ended up costing the public dearly. The major outlets are still only beginning to recover from this cold period.

Laura and Glenn are among the few who reported fearlessly on controversial topics throughout this period, even in the faceof withering personal criticism, and resulted in Laura specifically becoming targeted by the very programs involved in the recent disclosures. She had demonstrated the courage, personal experience and skill needed to handle what is probably the most dangerous assignment any journalist can be given — reporting on the secret misdeeds of the most powerful government in the world — making her an obvious choice.

  NYT

In June 2006, her tickets on domestic flights were marked “SSSS” — Secondary Security Screening Selection — which means the bearer faces extra scrutiny beyond the usual measures. She was detained for the first time at Newark International Airport before boarding a flight to Israel, where she was showing her film. On her return flight, she was held for two hours before being allowed to re-enter the country. The next month, she traveled to Bosnia to show the film at a festival there. When she flew out of Sarajevo and landed in Vienna, she was paged on the airport loudspeaker and told to go to a security desk; from there she was led to a van and driven to another part of the airport, then taken into a room where luggage was examined. “They took my bags and checked them,” Poitras said. “They asked me what I was doing, and I said I was showing a movie in Sarajevo about the Iraq war. And then I sort of befriended the security guy. I asked what was going on. He said: ‘You’re flagged. You have a threat score that is off the Richter scale. You are at 400 out of 400.’ I said, ‘Is this a scoring system that works throughout all of Europe, or is this an American scoring system?’ He said. ‘No, this is your government that has this and has told us to stop you.’

[...]

In Vienna, Poitras was eventually cleared to board her connecting flight to New York, but when she landed at J.F.K., she was met at the gate by two armed law-enforcement agents and taken to a room for questioning. It is a routine that has happened so many times since then — on more than 40 occasions — that she has lost precise count. Initially, she said, the authorities were interested in the paper she carried, copying her receipts and, once, her notebook. After she stopped carrying her notes, they focused on her electronics instead, telling her that if she didn’t answer their questions, they would confiscate her gear and get their answers that way. On one occasion, Poitras says, they did seize her computers and cellphones and kept them for weeks. She was also told that her refusal to answer questions was itself a suspicious act. Because the interrogations took place at international boarding crossings, where the government contends that ordinary constitutional rights do not apply, she was not permitted to have a lawyer present.

[...]

Poitras endured the airport searches for years with little public complaint, lest her protests generate more suspicion and hostility from the government, but last year she reached a breaking point. While being interrogated at Newark after a flight from Britain, she was told she could not take notes. On the advice of lawyers, Poitras always recorded the names of border agents and the questions they asked and the material they copied or seized. But at Newark, an agent threatened to handcuff her if she continued writing. She was told that she was being barred from writing anything down because she might use her pen as a weapon.

“Then I asked for crayons,” Poitras recalled, “and he said no to crayons.”

[...]

She added: “I’m not stopping what I’m doing, but I have left the country. I literally didn’t feel like I could protect my material in the United States, and this was before I was contacted by Snowden. If you promise someone you’re going to protect them as a source and you know the government is monitoring you or seizing your laptop, you can’t actually physically do it.”

[...]

Though she has written to members of Congress and has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, Poitras has never received any explanation for why she was put on a watch list. “It’s infuriating that I have to speculate why,” she said. “When did that universe begin, that people are put on a list and are never told and are stopped for six years? I have no idea why they did it. It’s the complete suspension of due process.” She added: “I’ve been told nothing, I’ve been asked nothing, and I’ve done nothing. It’s like Kafka. Nobody ever tells you what the accusation is.”

  NYT

And, the article reminds us of this…

William Binney, a former top N.S.A. official who publicly accused the agency of illegal surveillance, was at home one morning in 2007 when F.B.I. agents burst in and aimed their weapons at his wife, his son and himself. Binney was, at the moment the agent entered his bathroom and pointed a gun at his head, naked in the shower. His computers, disks and personal records were confiscated and have not yet been returned. Binney has not been charged with any crime.

Secondary Security Screening Selection – SSSS. We love our Nazi references – they’re so potent.

UPDATE:  audio interview with Maas

"The Land of the Free"

Whether a country is actually free is determined not by how well-rewarded its convention-affirming media elites are and how ignored its passive citizens are but by how it treats its dissidents, those posing authentic challenges to what the government does. The stories of [...] three Democracy Now guests — and so many others — provide that answer loudly and clearly.

[...]

We love to tell ourselves that there are robust political freedoms and a thriving free political press in the U.S. because you’re allowed to have an MSNBC show or blog in order to proclaim every day how awesome and magnanimous the President of the United States is and how terrible his GOP political adversaries are — how brave, cutting and edgy! — or to go on Fox News and do the opposite. But people who are engaged in actual dissent, outside the tiny and narrow permissible boundaries of pom-pom waving for one of the two political parties — those who are focused on the truly significant acts which the government and its owners are doing in secret — are subjected to [...] intimidation, threats, surveillance, and [a] climate of fear .

  Salon/Greenwald

Not to mention, arrests and trials for whistleblowers. *

Read Glenn Greenwald's entire post (Surveillance State evils) for summaries of the Democracy Now! trio:

William Binney: he worked at the NSA for almost 40 years, and resigned in October, 2001, in protest of the NSA’s turn to domestic spying. Binney immediately went to the House Intelligence Committee to warn them of the illegal spying the NSA was doing, and that resulted in nothing. In July, 2007 — while then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was testifying before the Senate about Bush’s warrantless NSA spying program — Binney’s home was invaded by a dozen FBI agents, who pointed guns at him, in an obvious effort to intimidate him out of telling the Senate the falsehoods and omissions in Gonzales’ testimony about NSA domestic spying (another NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, had his home searched several months later, and was subsequently prosecuted by the Obama DOJ — unsuccessfully — for his whistleblowing).

Jacob Appelbaum: an Internet security expert and hacker, he is currently at the University of Washington and engaged in some of the world’s most important work in the fight for Internet freedom. He’s a key member of the Tor Project, which is devoted to enabling people around the world to use the Internet with complete anonymity: so as to thwart government surveillance and to prevent nation-based Internet censorship.[...] For the last two years, Appelbaum has been repeatedly detained and harassed at American airports upon his return to the country, including having his laptops and cellphone seized — all without a search warrant, of course — and never returned. The U.S. Government has issued secret orders to Internet providers demanding they provide information about his email communications and social networking activities. He’s never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime.

Laura Poitras: she is the filmmaker about whom I wrote two weeks ago. After producing an Oscar-nominated film on the American occupation of Iraq, followed by a documentary about U.S. treatment of Islamic radicals in Yemen, she has been detained, searched, and interrogated every time she has returned to the U.S. She, too, has had her laptop and cell phone seized without a search warrant, and her reporters’ notes repeatedly copied. This harassment has intensified as she works on her latest film about America’s Surveillance State and the war on whistleblowers, which includes — among other things — interviews with NSA whistleblowers such as Binney and Drake.

The Democracy Now! video episode is also posted at the end of Greenwald's article.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

* bears reposting:.