Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill were the journalists who interviewed Edward Snowden as part of Laura Poitras’ documentary entitled Citizenfour. Snowden was a classified official working at Booz Allen Hamilton, who received all his tasks from the National Security Agency. Both journalists had a right to report the classified documents they were given by Snowden. It is the peoples right to know if they are being monitored, but it might impact society negatively. If people know they are being watched, it might hinder their intellectual ability.

In one of the scenes in the hotel room in Hong Kong, China, Edward Snowden says, “If the public knows google searches are being monitored, it will limit their intellectual ability.” This means that society will be scared to learn new things via the internet because their findings might be intercepted by the National Security Agency in a different context than what was intended. During the film, Snowden continuously talks to his wife Lindsey who he had to lie to by saying he was going to be away for work for however long was needed. As stories about the NSA went public, Lauren continued to talk to him via messaging. During one of the interviews, Snowden explained she was worried because she was notified the rent was not paid on the house and there were construction trucks on his street every day. If the rent was not paid, Lauren was going to be evicted. Snowden made a comment that the rent was set up to be paid electronically by itself every month, which made him wonder if this was a possible NSA interception. People will now be scared if they see something out of the ordinary. They will hide away instead of living their everyday lives. If they stay away from any interactions, they have nothing to hide.

George Packer, a journalist from The New Yorker, did a profile on Laura Poitras. It follows her through the editing process of Citizenfour. It explains more ways how intellectual capability will be dumbed down. As Laura was editing, she made Packer look away from the footage they were viewing at times to protect an anonymous source. She then had to cut out the footage because it would put the source’s life in jeopardy. The source could have been explaining how to avoid being watched by the NSA, but his wise thoughts had to be cut out. Poitras’ life is based around taking footage, which has got her in trouble with United States Officials. In between 2006 and 2012, she was stopped at airports over 40 times for interrogation and even had her electronic equipment confiscated on one occasion. Her equipment was reutrned, but if it had all of her work on it, it may have never been revealed to the public.  She blames her detainments on one incident in 2004 where she filmed a firefight against American Soldiers in Baghdad and was accused of having foreknowledge of the attack. She was put on a watch list for terrorists that included over 1.2 million Americans, which she did not belong on. Not only was she tracked like every other American, but now she was watched closely almost as if she was being stalked.