"That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence." - I hope that one day we realize this is true.
Poitras says "the reporting we’ve done has all been filtering what’s in the public interest versus what’s operational" yet in the same interview reveals "the communication flow for the drone system all goes through Rammstein, so it’s part of the nerve center. The controls are elsewhere, but it all runs through fiber optic cables that go in and out of Rammstein" How is it in the public interest to know that all drone communication flows through a specific base especially considering how valuable that fact might be to someone who would want to ground our drone fleet?<p>That is my only problem with Snowden and how these things are being reported. It started out with valid whistle blowing but there are plenty of real operational national secrets that are being revealed in the process. If Snowden simply stuck to the NSA's overreach in domestic spying, it would be much harder for politicians and the like to call him a traitor and marginalize these issues.
I found it odd when she said<p>> I was destroying the physical media, because you can’t encrypt SD cards.<p>Does she mean they don't come with built-in encryption? I'm curious as to why you couldn't just save an encrypted file or encrypted container to an SD card.<p>edit: aaah, camera. I got the wrong end of the stick. Thanks!
Most of the geopolitical analysis usually ignores the imminent public global preeminence of the astonishing economical power achieved by the Saudi guys + close allies in the close future. Not to mention how that economical power could look like in 100 years from now.<p>It is almost certain that this power it is currently already shaping many geopolitical events from the backstage.<p>Many think these new awesome amounts of money will just vanish after all the oil is gone, but that's not true. The money, most of it, it's already invested in many economical infrastructures around the world, the Saudí sphere of influence has probably similar chances to vanish in the next couple of hundred years as any of the current superpowers (US, Russia, China, etc.).<p>So many current superpower certainly need to comply with requests from those "new" kids on the block. Like it or not.<p>And many should look there for reasons to send troops where nobody wants to send them, or for to start wars without any public reasonable cause.
Mediocre interview, I think. Nothing really groundbreaking asked or answered with depth.<p>That said, I agree with her when she says that these two decades of war and terror we've inflicted on the world will be seen as dark times.<p>I say two decades because we've already been through 13 years, and only now are starting to show the faintest hints of slowing down the rampage abroad and the totalitarianism at home.
Does Snowden's legal fund actually have under 9000$?
<a href="https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/6mzUd" rel="nofollow">https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/6mzUd</a><p>Seems legitimate, but that's crazy to me. Maybe they don't count everything?
Can we fix the URL without the Google redirect? It should go to:<p><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitras-on-finding-edward-snowden-obama-s-tainted-legacy-and-oliver-stone-s-snowden-film.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitr...</a>
"You can't encrypt SD cards."<p>Right there she throws any accountability that she has any idea what she's talking about regarding encryption out the window.