Citizenfour, a film documenting interviews director Laura Poitras conducted with whistle-blower Edward Snowden, won the Oscar for best documentary Sunday. The talks took place as Snowden blew the lid off the United States National Security Agency's surveillance activities. <\/p>\n
The award highlights the divisions in the U.S. over Snowden's actions and the question of national security. <\/p>\n
\"The disclosures that Edward Snowden reveals don't only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself,\" Poitras said in her acceptance speech. <\/p>\n
\"When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control. Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage, and for the many other whistle-blowers. And I share this with Glenn Greenwald and other journalists who are exposing truth,\" she added. <\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the audience's applause, Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris quipped that Snowden \"couldn't be here for some treason.\" <\/p>\n
Glen Greenwald, the journalist whose role in publicizing Snowden's revelations also was documented in Citizenfour, later commented that Harris' remark was \"stupid and irresponsible.\" <\/p>\n
Greenwald said he would treat it as a pitiful joke, while noting the irony of \"Hollywood's fondness for congratulating itself for doing things like standing up for McCarthyism and blacklists.\" <\/p>\n
However, intelligence figures such as former CIA director General David Petraeus and U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have blasted Snowden as a traitor -- even though, as Greenwald pointed out, he has neither been charged nor convicted of that crime. <\/p>\n
At the same time, a movement to pressure President Obama for his pardon has gained strength. Snowden also has gained considerable media support for his actions. <\/p>\n
So far, the administration has ignored a petition that garnered nearly 165,000 signatures by June 2013. The grassroots organization We the People organized that petition, which is posted on the Whitehouse.gov website. <\/p>\n
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