Citizens Media Resource: Snowden Filmmaker Sues U.S. Over Harassment

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Snowden Filmmaker Sues U.S. Over Harassment

Filmmaker Laura Poitras, who won an Academy Award for her documentary, Citizenfour, which

chronicled Edward Snowden's release of information about government spying on citizens, has sued the United States to find out why she has been detained at airports more than 50 times.

Poitras filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what the government had on her, to see her file and to learn their reason for detaining a working journalist who had broken no laws. The government agencies, however, refused to hand over what they had.

On Monday, Poitras sued those agencies. The 51-year-old Boston native said she was filing the FOIA suit against the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in support of “the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders.”

Poitras said officials have confiscated her laptop, phone, cameras and notes and copied their contents.

Links to stories about Poitras' lawsuit:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/oscar-and-pulitzer-award-winning-journalist-laura-poitras-sues-us-government-uncove-0

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8971267/laura-poitras-foia-lawsuit

http://time.com/3956685/laura-poitras-lawsuit-u-s-government-citizenfour-harassment/

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Wish List of Research

1. Who makes money on war? And on military buying, protecting and occupying? Yeah, we already know, but let's audit this with excellent research that lays out who profited and continues to profit from our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afganistan....or any other military activity and occupations, past or present. We have at least 823 foreign bases that the U.S. admits to; those are paid for by taxpayers, and the military bases are there principally to guard the oil for Exxon-Mobil. I believe we will find that taxpayers spend a huge amount on corporate welfare and subsidies to giant corporations, whose profits obviously are more important than the lives and limbs that are sacrificed in military actions. While we are at it, we should study who makes money from natural disasters, and how they get handed huge government contracts---in a no-bid rush, of course, since it is an emergency. There are capitalistic exploiters who feed off this as an industry; they are just not so long-established as what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex."

2. Economic impact of legalizing use and sale of marijuana. There's another economic stimulus and revenue raiser. It would be regulated for safety and legal for individuals and small outfits to grow and sell. With the chance for broad participation, and the exclusion of monopolistic takeover of the market, many Americans would have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs.