Lacdang, Prynces Therese L.

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Course: OBTEC CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Citizenfour Review:

Citizenfour directed by Laura Poitras is a 2014 documentation of how Poitras and

Greenwald, The Guardian’s journalist be in touched with Edward Snowden in order to leak
National Security Agency documents concerning intrusive illegal surveillance to alarm American
citizens that they are all being watched.
Citizenfour showcases the relevance of individual rights and data privacy over states
security. It was when Snowden risked his life, disclosing that despite official statements to the
contrary, the US and the UK were widely using their ability to eavesdrop upon every phone call,
every email, every internet search, every keystroke. The pre-emptive mining of data has gone
beyond suspicion of terrorist activity. As Snowden says: “We are building the biggest weapon
for oppression in the history of mankind,” and a martial law for intercepting telecommunication
is being created by stealth. This is despite the bland denials of every official up to and including
President Obama, whose supercilious claim to have been investigating the issue before the
Snowden revelations has been brutally exposed by this film. Every Americans right to data
privacy has been neglected to due such happening.
Every individual has personal data collected by the Agency of Security in each and every
country. Those several different information are meant to be protected and kept, but due to
different intentions and reasonings, there are hackings of system occurring to get data and use it
against the owner or the country for several reasons, one of this is war. Everybody has the right
to privacy, in accordance to Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12 “No one shall be
subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to
attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law
against such interference or attacks”, (United Nations, 1948) which was clearly violated by such
happening. American citizens right to privacy has been abolished by such happening.
Additionally, in Philippines there is as existing law that provides right to privacy of every citizen
or what we call the Data Privacy Act of 2012, it is the “policy of the State to protect the
fundamental human right of privacy, of communication while ensuring free flow of information
to promote innovation and growth. The State recognizes the vital role of information and
communications technology in nation-building and its inherent obligation to ensure that
personal information in information and communications systems in the government and in the
private sector are secured and protected.” (National Privacy Commission, 2012).
With such law, every citizen has the right to keep privacy on their personal information,
in every cellular phone, computer, use of debit or credit cards transactions, there are several
different data that are present and can be hacked to use it against you that can lead to massive
possibilities, one of the possibility is war. Data is becoming more and more valuable. Also, skills
and opportunities for retrieving different types of personal data are evolving extremely fast.
Unauthorized, careless or ignorant processing of personal data can cause great harm to persons
and to countries.