A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. The film premiered in early 2006 and received widespread acclaim, including an Oscar nomination for best documentary. Since then she has made five films, most recently “The Oath,” about the Guantánamo prisoner Salim Hamdan and his brother-in-law back in Yemen, and has been the recipient of a Peabody Award and a MacArthur award. Accordingly, the Defendants’ motion to dismiss House’s First Amendment claim is DENIED.
– Those following the Edward Snowden case will probably recognize the name Glenn Greenwald as the journalist writing up all the resulting scoops. But Laura Poitras? She's a 49-year-old documentary filmmaker from the US who is working with Greenwald and is crucial to the Snowden saga, reports Peter Maass in a fascinating New York Times Magazine piece. Greenwald himself sums it up with a reference to the Kevin Spacey flick the Usual Suspects: “I keep calling her the Keyser Soze of the story, because she’s at once completely invisible and yet ubiquitous. She’s been at the center of all of this, and yet no one knows anything about her.” Turns out that Greenwald initially ignored Snowden's "annoying and complicated" emails, prompting Snowden to turn to Poitras. He knew she was making a documentary about surveillance, and she used her expertise in encryption technology to begin a dialogue with him—and eventually sell Greenwald on the story. If the name rings a bell, it's because Poitras has made a number of controversial documentaries about Iraq and Abu Ghraib, earning herself a spot on a US watch list and thus dozens of airport interrogations. (Greenwald wrote about her travails in Salon.) The full Times piece details their first meetings with Snowden (they were shocked at how young he was) and the resulting chaos when the first stories appeared. “Our lives will never be the same,” says Poitras. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live someplace and feel like I have my privacy. That might be just completely gone.” Read the full story here.