Snowden Anniversary and Announcement of CitizenFour Ottawa Screening

Monday, June 15, at 6pm CIPPIC, Amnesty International Canada & the Ottawa Public Library will host a free public screening of CitizenFour. The documentary explores how former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden approached reporters Laura Poitras (who also directed the Academy Award winning documentary), Glenn Greenwald and others with a treasure trove of classified documents exposing the shear unprecedented scope and magnitude of the NSA's monitoring of the world's digital activities. This, in turn, launched an international debate about the protection of privacy in the digital age and the appropriate role of our foreign intelligence agencies.

Today marks the two year anniversary of the day the Guardian first reported on an NSA program that mandated Verizon and other US-based telecommunications companies to hand over metadata on all phone calls (domestic and foreign) on a regular basis in order to populate a metadata base that it could data-mine at will as part of its foreign intelligence program. The story sent ripples around the globe, and last week the US congress greatly restricted it by limiting the NSA's surveillance powers for the first time in decades. But the expansive metadata program, it turned out, was just the tip of the iceberg as a string of revelations from Snowden's files followed, each more staggering than its predecessor and confirming privacy advocate's worst predictions (CJFE hosts a searchable archive of these). We have also learned much about Canada's complicity (by its participation in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership with the US, UK, Australia & New Zealand) in creating this global web of surveillance. The film is a must-see for any privacy advocate, as well as for anyone who wants to learn about Snowden's experience or how our communications networks are monitored.

The event will be in English.

Resources:

• Edward Snowden's 2 year anniversary op-ed "The World Says No to Surveillance", New York Times, June 4, 2015
• Amnesty's #UnfollowMe campaign calls on Five Eye governments to scale back their mass surveillance efforts
• "Law, Privacy & Surveillance in Canada in the Post Snowden Era", (Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2015) a new and timely book edited by Professor Michael Geist and available for free download through University of Ottawa's open access policy
• International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, a set of comprehensive principles for fixing surveillance in the digital age
• Privacy International & Amnesty International's assessment of surveillance developments 2 years post-Snowden
• David Lyon, "Surveillance After Snowden", (Polity Books, forthcoming 2015), a compelling account of the Snowden revelations and the public reactions they have elicited

Event Details: