Journalist Laura Poitras is being described as the connection between the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the reporters for The Guardian and The Washington Post who published his leaked documents about government surveillance. Poitras shared a byline on two of the key articles about the ongoing NSA revelations, and filmed the Guardian interview in Hong Kong in which Snowden went public with his identity. But well before she took on Snowden’s case, Poitras has come face to face with issues of privacy and state surveillance over her work as a documentary filmmaker. In an excerpt of an April 2012 interview on Democracy Now!, Poitras discusses her repeated detention and interrogation by federal agents whenever she enters the United States. The interrogations began after Poitras began working on her documentary, “My Country, My Country,” about post-invasion Iraq, and continued with most recent film, “The Oath,” about ex-Guantánamo prisoners returning to Yemen. She estimates she has been detained approximately 40 times and has had her laptop, cellphone and personal belongings repeatedly searched.
© 2013 Democracy Now!
