CitizenFour Documentary Takeaways

 This documentary shows a situation I was not originally familiar with, but it helped me better understand the role of both government contractors and the NSA in mass surveillance both in the U.S. and internationally.

Biggest takeaways:
- There is a very big difference between releasing classified information indiscriminately and doing so through journalists, and journalists have a surprising but encouraging level of protection from prosecution for cooperating with people who willingly committing treason in the U.S. when performing investigative journalism. Journalists were involved with redacting information that might have been especially harmful for the U.S., and they helped set a narrative that was more favorable to Edward Snowden.
- Mass surveillance is and has been common in the U.S., but also in other allied countries. It is accomplished primarily through government contractors in the U.S., and companies who collect data may need to share it with the government.
- Edward Snowden was seen more favorably by people outside of the U.S. and this could be related to how non-U.S. citizens were spied on but wouldn't have been able to make a court case against the U.S. government.
- One of the most obvious lessons would be that the government has done things that betray people's trust, and a powerful bureaucratic system usually requires external accountability, as internal methods don't always work.

It was an interesting documentary, touching on a variety of details. It was interesting to see the extent and limits of the United State's influence on extraditing people facing conviction, especially from Russia. Putin himself would be arrested if he went to a lot of western countries, although maybe not the U.S. for political reasons.