Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who worked with journalist Glenn Greenwald to cover NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s story, has a bleak opinion of the U.S. Congress.
“Our elected officials have failed the public,” she told The Hill in an interview.
“I’m appreciative of the work that [Sen.] Ron Wyden [D-Ore.] has done on the topic, but I also think the kind of dance and hinting around doesn’t really inform people; it just tells us that there is something awry, something amiss,” Poitras said.
Poitras especially criticized members of the Intelligence Committee, like Wyden, who have not released the long-awaited CIA report on its interrogation methods.
“If either the CIA or the executive branch don’t want to publish it, then I don’t understand why somebody on the committee who worked on this report doesn’t just take the floor and start to read it,” Poitras said. “They have immunity.”
Poitras has received a Pulitzer Prize for her work with Snowden, and recently released her documentary on Snowden’s revelations, “Citizenfour“.
She expressed some optimism about public opinion on privacy issues: “There’s definitely a global shift in consciousness and I think we’re already seeing a technological shift, so I don’t think [nothing changing] is a possibility,” she said.
Poitras recently spoke to Variety about the risks she herself took on by dedicating herself to Snowden’s project: “I was very conscious of the fact that we were going to anger some very powerful people and that there were a lot of risks going in to this,” she said.
