The greatest weakness amongst the public is our susceptibility to ignorance. As the old saying goes, “Knowledge is power” and when organizations with greater resources purposely leave the public in the dark, they create a public that is by default worse off. When organizations with great power, such as government agencies, do not keep their public informed, who then will? A public that only knows parts of a story or perhaps no part of the story at all, falls prey to victimization. This is exactly what happened with the case of the NSA.

In the film CitizenFour, a clip of Barack Obama giving a press conference is shown where he says that he does not find people like Edward Snowden to be a true patriot for releasing the private classified information about the NSA. Obama says that the American public would want fair trials and reviews conducted by courts to monitor failings within the NSA. However, earlier in the movie, we saw that when the NSA was being reviewed by government officials, the director of the NSA, blatantly lied about the NSA not having access to American citizens’ private information such as their cell phone usage, Internet usage, etc.

So when things like this happen and people who we are expected to trust, willfully perjure, who does the public turn to? Who can we turn to? The clear answer is the media. Individuals within the public do not have the resources to find out when their own government is committing crimes against them. But people like Poitras and Greenwald do. They are vetted and well seasoned journalists who have the prowess to protect the public from the one entity that is supposed to be protecting us.

Is there a duty to publish classified documents? Yes and no. There is a duty when it directly affects the public’s interests, which in this case it did. As was stated in the film, using metadata, the NSA can virtually track you at any given point and reasonably accuse of something you did not do, by piecing together a story with facts, but without context. That is dangerous. How can the public trust its government when the government feels like it can’t trust the public?

It is reasonable to withhold certain documents from the public if it puts the country or the country’s interests at stake. That is fair and agreed upon. However, the duty of journalists as the “Fourth Estate” is to check that our government is not committing heinous crimes and worse, using taxpayer money to do so, and worst of all, using these resources against the taxpayers themselves.

The citizens of this country have a lot to worry about. We are concerned about healthcare, the war overseas, poverty, underfunded public education, immigration, and the list goes on, But the only reason we have legitimate concern for all of these things is because a trusted source delivers to us the facts about these things. Then we are able to form our own thoughts and opinions on them and try and come up with viable solutions and use our government as a means to achieve it. But how can we understand the problem of national security that our government is trying to address when it is all a secret? Are we to live in constant fear forever that Big Brother is watching?

No. We need journalists like Poitras and Greenwald to uncover what can be done on the public’s end to end this violation on every American citizen and on citizens abroad committed by our government. It is unfair that Poitras has to live in exile in Berlin. It is unfair that, as stated in the article, she feels like there are microphones facing her apartment. Is it paranoia? Maybe. Is it legitimate? Yes, it clearly is. And without her and others like her, we would not know it was legitimate.

It is unfair that our government has not only the resources to launch a campaign against its own citizens, but that it chooses to do so, and poses it as “in the public’s interest.” As a democratic nation, we have the right to decide for ourselves what is in our best interests. And if we feel that being watched or using resources to send a drone to follow someone’s house is not the best allocation of those resources, then we need to present another more viable option. One that does not violate our rights.