Jack Hutton
Mass Media and Society
Citizenfour Review Citizenfour documents the harsh reality of how little privacy we have in modern society. The documentary shows how the government through the NSA will stop at no means to collecting information about its populace and the populace of the world. The documentary shows how the whistleblowing of this information leads to the government effectively raiding his house, excommunicating him from his family, and effectively labeling him as a traitor. The information leaked by Snowden directly shows how the government(s) is/are watching everything we do, which is depressingly orwellian. What I took from this documentary is that though we live in a democracy our government finds ways to control its citizens much like a dictatorship. The thought that comes to mind while watching how much the government knows about any given individual is the idea from George Orwell’s 1984 of the “Thought police.” Immediately following Snowden’s leak the government raids his house, questions his girlfriend, and effectively, and unsuccessfully, begins trying to silence any further leaking information. Thus, the government through the NSA is attempting to control knowledge and how people think, or at the very least control the use of the first amendment. This shows that the government will break the constitution, what our country was founded on, in order to keep its citizens in check. It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Those who would give up
