thank you and be careful. "citizenfour." >> who are you? i work for -- what is your name. edward snowden. i go by ed. edward joseph snowden is the full name. >> charlie: poitras received the pulitzer for her work on the snowden leaks and co-founder of the intersef.

tools for over a decade. >> charlie: we said in the last couple of weeks, a case where the head of the f.b.i. said on 60 minutes, you know, that they were very concerned about the fact that, you know, these things -- that they had no access. they didn't have the encryption code. >> i have a lot of friends who are cryptographers. if you have a system that has back doors, it's naive to think only the u.s. can break the back doors, that other gochts can break them and you have a system, an internet that's insecure by design and there are a lot of people who think that's

some cases you said yes and in some no. is that fair? >> everyone goes through the contact and confrontation with the government saying, this is what we intent to publish, do you want to comment on it and do you have any concerns about what we're publishing? in terms of stories i've worked on, i'm trying to think -- there were some redactions of stories that i've worked on that have happened because the government made a persuasive argument that they should be redacted, but in general, you know, these decisions are made in newsrooms, the guardian of the sometimes. >> charlie: these decisions are made in newsrooms all over the country, had nothing to do with edward snowden. >> sure, this is the process. everything has gone through that process in terms of harmony. we have been careful in terms of

here's a trailer for "citizenfour." >> laura, at this stage, i can offer nothing more than my word. i am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. i hope you understand the con text, this is extremely high risk. know every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, site you visit and subject you type is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not. in the end if you publish the material, i will likely be implicated. i ask only that you ensure this information makes it home to the american public. thank you and be careful.

go public as the source, to acknowledge he is the source. >> people say, are you going public? >> i think it's soon. i think as soon as they try to make this about me, which should be any day now, i'll come out just to go, hey, you know, this is not a question of somebody skullicking around in the shadows. these are public issues, not my issues. these are everybody's issues and i'm not afraid of you. you're not going to bully me into silence like you've done to everybody else. and if nobody else will do it, i will. and hopefully, when i'm gone, whatever you do to me, somebody else will do the same thing. it will be the sort of internet principle of the hydra.

hasn't been actual changes yet. you know, in terms of i have been working on post-9/11 stuff for a long time and i think one of the dilemmas i've seen is a lot of the policies we're engaging in, i would argue they don't necessarily make us safer. if you look at the iraq war which i documented, you know, i think that we're seeing now some of the unintended consequences of that occupation and what happened and the kind of instability in the region. so i think that i'm not fully convinced that the security that the government says that they're providing in these policies for

that has absolutely changed. we're seeing that shift. we're seeing more change in the technology companies and in our government in the sense that the tech knoll companies realize that the customers do want to be able to communicate privately and they want to build tools that will satisfy that. so i think we're going to see more and more technology companies coming forward and offering ways to encrypt communication. i also think there's a movement of the free software movement that have been building these tools for over a decade.

the -- i guess you could say the effect that you feel you're being monitored or surveilled. >> charlie: what do you hope this accomplishes? >> for me, it's a documentary or story about journalism, about what happens, journalists working on a story. it's very much a story of the era of crackdown on forces and whistle blowers and journalism we've seen in the last years where you have people like my friend and colleague james risen who's being subpoenaed and potentially will go to jail because he's not going to testify against a source, and the government is doing a lot of these things. we know they subpoenaed the phone records of the a.p. so i think it's a portrait of journalism done in difficult circumstances and i think it's a story about somebody willing to take personal risks, sacrifices to expose information they think the public has a right to know.

>> he's definitely an idealist. he's somebody who very much grew up on the internet. he is the generation that came of age on the internet. and he came of age and says this in the film where the internet was a free place and he believes it was one of the most beautiful things humanity could ever have. that you could have a means where people from all over the world, all ages, communicating freely with each other. i think that really motivated him. but to see that be something that's sort of taken away from people and used for other means -- means of surveillance, commercial means. so i think he saw something that he thought was really profound and should be protected and that was slipping away. >> charlie: so that was his motivation? >> i think that's the core motivation, yeah.

consciousness globally around what states are capable of doing, what intelligence agencies are capable of doing. so i think he's raised that awareness. i think one of his main goals is he shows things like we live in a democracy, we have a rule of law and a constitution and there were things happening in secret

the reporting that we've done. >> charlie: they argue, for example, they'll argue that somehow people will know what sources they have, not in terms of individuals, but they will know their means and that that somehow will result in them having to go through a process of having to redo whatever means they had, spying on enemies of the state, so to speak. >> i mean, i would say -- i mean, there are stories i've worked on and doing the reporting and there are two stories that talk about one of the things they're doing in terms of targeting. they've gone and targeted engineers at telecoms, so the people who are sort of the keepers of the passwords and gateways into the telecommunication systems. we have documents that show actual names of people who work for belgian telekom in germany

and names of engineers, these are people not suspected overanything. the only reason you see h.q. which is a british intelligence agency and the n.s.a. are interested in is because these people are, you know, an access point to get to their networks. and, i mean, yeah, i have published those kinds of stories and it does reveal that they're doing something so if you have an individual goes to their linkedin page and the h.q. or n.s.a. will send back malicious software that will affect the engineer's computer and they go and type in a password and then the n.s.a. or h.q. has their password. this is happening in allied countries and in europe. i think this reporting should happen and there should be questions about the extent of these technologies.

of question that things are ongoing and threats -- you know, i think -- i believe that what the n.s.a. is doing is a threat to democracy. >> charlie: what it continues to do? >> what it continues to do is a threat. in terms of my profession as a journalist, if the government can find out who i'm talking to, then how can i protect the source, you know? and i think that -- and it's not just me. there are many, many --

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