Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, whose film ‘Citizenfour’ about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden won an Academy Award earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit against the United States government, alleging she was targeted for ‘harassment’ at US and international airports.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, claims that during her travel from 2006 to 2012 for work on her documentary films, she was detained every time she entered the country. After being targeted by security agents, she says, she filed Freedom of Information Act requests naming or relating to her, but she has received either scant response or her requests have been ignored.
Other defendants named in the suit include the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Throughout her career, Poitras has worked on politically sensitive topics including the American military occupation in Iraq, the Guantanamo Bay prison and the aforementioned whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Poitras says in her complaint that her troubles with airport screening date back to 2006, while she was traveling to the Jerusalem Film Festival to screen My Country, My Country, and continued to 2012, when journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about her experiences being detained at the border. Through that time, she reports being held up to hours at a time, being told she was on the No Fly List, having her electronic equipment held for 41 days and, around the time she was working on a film about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, being threatened with handcuffs for taking notes.[blockquote cite=”Laura Poitras” type=”left”]“I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law. This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.”[/blockquote]
Besides winning an Academy Award, Poitras shared the Pulitzer Prize that The Guardian and The Washington Post won for public service last year for its coverage of the National Security Agency.
Source: EFF
