Ireland

Ireland

Thursday, February 26, 2015

A documentary.....a good one

I love a good documentary. The subject almost doesn't matter. It can be sports, environmental, historic, whatever. I like em all.

My daughter Erin, who is my main supplier when I need a documentary fix, turned me on to CitizenFour, the film about Edward Snowden and his leaking of NSA documents. I followed this story from afar as it was taking place in real time, I think that may have been about the time I gave up cable news for Lent, so I didn't know the gory details.

I highly recommend this film. Well, if you still think that our governing body still has one ethical bone left in that body, then don't watch this film, because you will come away very very angry, like I did.

Let me be clear. I love the United States. I love my State. I love my house, but about midway through this film I thought to myself, "I'm out of here. I'm moving to Europe. I can't stand the lies and the secrecy." About 10 minutes after I had that revelation, Edward Snowden looked at the reporter who was there, from the UK, and said, "oh, you think the NSA is bad? The GCAQ is much worse than the NSA when it comes to spying on it's citizens. Well, so much for moving to Europe.

We all know big brother is watching, right? That's sort of common knowledge, but I seriously did not know it was too the extent it was. The vast numbers of U.S. citizens being watched and listened to is mind boggling. Drones, cell phones, house phones, credit card purchases, the internet. It's crazy.

And drones?? Don't get me started. Snowden said that when he was working for the NSA, he, and every other employee with a certain clearance, had computers on their desk. On the desktop of these computers were real time video feeds, of drones, all over the world, just watching. Thousands of them. Like youtube thumbnails, all they had to do was choose one, and they could see what the drones were looking at. Some drones just circling, round and round, for hours....even days. On my desktop I have the weather. NSA employees had spy cameras. And they denied it.

Snowden said that not only will something you said on the internet be seen, if the NSA searches a particular word of phrase, but typed words like "terror", "Terrorist", "kidnap", etc will be zipped to a NSA computer geek, without them even searching for it.

That just blows my mind. (terrorist) Nothing is sacred. What I hated most about the documentary ( terror) is the way the government officials, NSA big wigs, and President Obama himself, looked right into the camera, and denied everything!! (kidnap) They can't deny it. Snowden had the documents. (liar-liar-pants on fire) (kidnapping terrorists).

When ever someone would say to me, "Big brother is watching" I would always retort with, I have nothing to hide, let them look. My mindset has changed. I'm pissed and I want to leave. But it seems there is no place to go.

4 comments:

Denise at Autumn Sky said...

I'm sure there's no going back, now that it's all gone this far. I try to stay focused on my life and the natural world around me because the rest is like a dark hole that you can fall into and go crazy.

Joey said...

What Denise said.

Jerral Miles said...

The trick is not to become paranoid... knowing "they" probably know Jerral Miles is interested in just about everything Mark Finucane is doing on the other side of the continent from San Diego.

Busy Bee Suz said...

I want to see this one!