Yesterday, I chanced upon a news article in Times of India that brought Edward Snowden back into serious relevance. Coincidentally, I also chanced upon the movie “Snowden” during my Netflix grazing yesterday. I dug in right away.
The movie is based on real life events in the life of Edward Snowden who is an US army man turned CIA analyst when he whistle-blows his way through the thicket of US intelligence operations in the CIA and the NSA. So, the below shouldn’t count as spoilers.
Apparently, the NSA was “running a dragnet on the whole world”. When Snowden first finds out about the sheer reach and scope of surveillance operations of the CIA, he gets slightly disturbed by the possibility of their snooping into the private lives of American public through phones and web cams.
As technology is a double-edged sword, such unprecedented control over the data of American public can potentially be used for nefarious ends. So even if the NSA defends itself saying it is for the purpose of defence, it is unacceptable. When Snowden learns of the US government’s strategy to plant malware in the computer networks of its allies, he realises that it is to retaliate against those countries if they turn against it. That’s goes to show the scale of preemptive war mindset of the USA.
As a brilliant analyst and consultant, Snowden continues to work on top, classified projects of the CIA and the NSA. Eventually, he begins to question the ethics behind such massive surveillance projects used for everything between targeting terror suspects to subversive tactics that extract information from random American public.
One fine day, he steals the NSA’s classified files and shares it with the newsroom of The Guardian, saying that he wants to be a part of the debate between the public and the Government where the former could judge his actions vis-a-vis the surveillance policies of the latter. In doing so, he gives up his well-paying job, a stable relationship with his girlfriend and more importantly, the right to be an US citizen. He is now a violator of the espionage act and a wanted criminal. And, he is a patriot on the run.
He plans to seek political asylum from Ecuador and travels through Russia but stays back in Russia as his passport is revoked in the interim. Meanwhile, the Obama administration which initially says “No, I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker” dismissively, concludes later that Snowden is a whistle-blower and changes its legislation to not use the data of American public stored with Verizon and the top internet companies. Snowden intends to return to the USA, but only when he is assured that there is going to be a fair trial. He is believed to be living in Russia at an undisclosed location right now.
I felt that the movie did not do justice to the scope of the events in Snowden’s life. It was shot by a brilliant director who is known to make controversial movies. However, it comes across like a regular Hollywood movie, glamorizing and dramatizing the events, the music et al. It would have been more respectable and probably critically acclaimed, had he made a rich tapestry of documentary instead. The good part about the movie is the out-of-life sequences towards the end showing Obama administration’s statements in the news coverage, which rendered an aura of “real” to the movie. A feather in the cap for Joseph Gordon-Levitt for his hacker-turned-whistle-blower-performance.
3/5
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