年度女性 勞拉波伊特拉斯

The first time Laura Poitras was stopped and questioned at an airport, she thought it was a mistake. Flying home to the US from the Sarajevo film festival in 2006, she was paged at Vienna airport and asked to go to security. She was put on a bus, taken to a baggage inspection room and questioned about her trip. She asked: “Why are you stopping me?” The answer: “Well, you know, your name came up on a US government list, and you have a threat score that is really high.”

...

If it was high then, today it is stratospheric. Poitras has played a key role in the world’s greatest leak of espionage secrets — American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of a huge US electronic surveillance programme. Poitras is one of only two journalists to whom Snowden last year entrusted his treasure trove of documents taken from the National Security Agency, the cyber intelligence organisation. She is also the director of Citizenfour, a film about her encounter with Snowden, which is tipped for an Oscar as best documentary of 2014.
Poitras now assumes she is under surveillance, night and day. “I am lit up like a Christmas tree behind the scenes,” she says, quite casually. “Which means there is probably a graph, and the graph shows who are the people that I am in contact with.” She is speaking in Berlin, where she now lives. Milky autumn light streams through the windows, gently illuminating her. She looks younger than her 52 years and gestures fluidly when she speaks. If she worries about the perpetual monitoring of her daily life, she does not show it. “The choice is, either I say: ‘Well, I’ll stop doing this kind of work,’ you know, because the harassment is really bothersome, or ‘I’ll keep doing it.’”
The incident at Vienna airport occurred soon after she had finished My Country, My Country, a 2006 film that followed the lives of ordinary Iraqis under the US occupation after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Nominated for an Oscar, it also caused the US intelligence agencies to put Poitras on something she now knows is a “watch list” — a roster of people the US authorities seek to track. Next came another documentary that may have irritated the US government — The Oath, a 2010 film about two Yemeni brothers who served Osama bin Laden as driver and bodyguard, one of whom ended up in Guantánamo Bay.
That first Vienna questioning has been followed by about 40 others at US airports. Poitras has had her computer, notebooks and mobile phone taken away, sometimes for weeks. She says she assumed that when officials realised she was “just a film-maker”, she would be taken off the list. But it didn’t happen. “And then, I became more conFrontational at the airport, you know, taking notes while answering questions, asserting my rights as a journalist.”
When Snowden got in touch last year, she quickly realised his story had the potential to cause a much bigger shock than anything she had done before. “The minute I thought Snowden was real, of course, I was fearful. I mean it was clear this was going to be dangerous — to anger the most powerful people in the world.”
The 31-year-old computer expert had electronic files containing more than one million documents Snowden had taken from the NSA, where he worked as a contractor until he fled for Hong Kong in May 2013. He decided to hand them over to Poitras and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. Hiding in a Hong Kong hotel, he arranged a secret meeting with them and another Guardian journalist. As Poitras portrays in Citizenfour, Snowden spent hours in his cramped room explaining his secrets and convincing the three reporters. Later she asked Snowden why he had chosen her. He emailed in reply: “You asked why I picked you. I didn’t. You did.” He was talking about her reputation: she was the kind of formidable force he needed to make sure his revelations would reach a global audience.
The result was a string of stories published in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and elsewhere, detailing the electronic spying operations of the NSA and its partners in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They reported on Prism, a secret programme for eavesdropping on Americans’ Google and Yahoo accounts; on Tempora, a British-run global surveillance scheme, and on XKeyscore, a computer filter for sifting vast amounts of internet data. The stories revealed that agents spied on players engaged in the World of Warcraft online game, snooped around aid organisations Unicef and Médecins Sans Frontières, and even tapped the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel.
The impact was immediate. In the US, Snowden was condemned by some as a traitor and lauded by others as a hero. The authorities charged him with espionage and accused him of assisting the enemies of the US. Washington wants to bring Snowden back from Russia, where he sought protection a few days after his encounter with Poitras.
However, US President Barack Obama also ordered a review of NSA procedures, which made a string of recommendations to increase court scrutiny. “One of the things that has been interesting to watch about the NSA story is how it has cut across political lines. We have had people both from the Democratic and the Republican parties who have been outraged,” says Poitras. In other countries, support for Snowden has been far stronger, notably in Germany, where politicians were furious at the Merkel phone-tap and public opinion is particularly concerned about the invasion of privacy.
Little in Poitras’s early life prepared her for this global drama. She grew up in a prosperous home in Boston, Massachusetts. She won’t talk about her family but it is a matter of record that her wealthy parents donated $20m for medical research to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After school, the young Poitras moved to San Francisco and worked for a while as a pastry chef before taking up film studies. She moved to New York, where she focused on documentaries and made her first award-winning film, Flag Wars, an account of the gentrification of Columbus, Ohio.
Everything changed for Poitras in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack. “Somehow I felt that what was happening in the country was really disturbing and that I wanted to say something about it,” she remembers. She became increasingly concerned about the US government’s response, including the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. And she started work on the controversial films that have made her one of the world’s best-known documentary-makers.
Despite being a favourite for an Oscar, she says winning awards is not the point — the films themselves are the point. Poitras is not convinced governments have changed much in response to the Snowden disclosures. “There has been a lot of lip service and a lot of recommendations in committees but no real fundamental changes of these policies,” she says. “In terms of concrete policy changes, maybe Merkel’s phone isn’t being tapped right now. But I am not sure how much of a big shift there is.”
So surveillance continues at the same level as before? Poitras thinks there is “probably some reining in” of the targeted surveillance of people who “cannot be suspected of any wrongdoing”, perhaps out of fear of legal action. “I would guess people think twice in the intelligence agencies before they do that.” But she is far more positive about the revelations’ wider impact. “The reporting has changed consciousness and awareness around these issues . . . globally,” she says.
Technology companies, including Google, Apple and Facebook, are “making real big changes in terms of offering privacy for customers” out of a fear that co-operating with the US government could lose them business, she says. “So you have those kind of things in the tech industry that are shifting and I think will continue to shift. They’ll be offering encryption and privacy for customers.”
Poitras is particularly pleased with developments in Germany, where she has lived since 2012 before she began making Citizenfour, having decided it would be too risky to work in the US. But she is scathing about Britain, which she has refused to visit, even to promote Citizenfour, for fear of arrest. “My lawyers really were concerned and careful, and so the UK is the one country that I haven’t travelled to.”
She adds: “Yes, I go back to the US but the US is different. I mean, the US has the First Amendment [in its constitution] that protects the press. It has never happened that the US government has gone after journalists for publishing information that is classified.”
In Britain, it is the catch-all nature of the Official Secrets Act that deters her, especially after officials entered The Guardian’s offices and ordered the destruction of Snowden-linked computer hardware. This moment is captured in the film — the hammers smashing the electronics to pieces. Her voice rising slightly, she says: “I mean, it is shocking to me actually to learn this, that there are no laws that are protecting the press and no historical memory of what happens if you don’t have a healthy functioning free press.”
Like Snowden himself, Poitras believes there are cases when secret surveillance is legitimate — suspected terrorist plots, for example, or nuclear proliferation. “But it shouldn’t be bulk drag nets, suspicious surveillance of entire populations. We live in democracies that have a rule of law, which has been sidestepped in these programmes.”
She admits surveillance has changed her. Not only is she ultra-careful about practical issues — such as encrypting emails and having two computers, one for work and one for general use. She re-read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when she was getting emails from Snowden and was struck by the moment when the hero, Winston Smith, is trying to write a journal without being observed by the all-seeing eyes of the state. She recalls: “The sort of chilling effect then, when actually he sits down to write, he actually couldn’t express himself. I felt this, not to that extent, but there is this chilling effect where you realise that, well, if I think my computer is infiltrated, then do I really want [to write] personal things on an email? I start using pencil and paper, you know — those kinds of things.”
But she is proud that she trusts all the people involved in the Snowden film — and that a majority of her closest colleagues were women. When she presented her team at a premiere in Berlin, nine of the first 15 people on the stage were female; she says she chose individuals not because they were women but because they were “absolutely the best people” and that in documentary film-making women play a much bigger role than they do in Hollywood. “There are so many prominent women directors in documentary, so I don’t feel what I am doing is unique.”
She wonders whether this is because the organisations are much smaller than for Hollywood features. “I actually think you can make your way without going through the same levels of systems’ bureaucracies. I don’t know.”
Poitras sees Citizenfour as the third in a trilogy about US power that began with her Iraq and Guantánamo films. She says it is “too soon to say” what she might do next. But she is working on a film-based installation for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2016 that will address “the same themes but in a different way”.
“The truth is that I am not going to stop caring about these issues. We are 13 years after 9/11 and still have a war in Afghanistan. We still have policies that are really moving us in a direction that I don’t think is right for the country. There is a sort of moral drift away from fundamental principles, of transparency and government.” It is a serious view. But then making Poitras documentaries is a serious business. Snowden chose well.

當勞拉•波伊特拉斯(Laura Poitras)第一次在機場被攔下詢問時，她以爲是弄錯了。2006年從薩拉熱窩電影節(the Sarajevo film festival)飛回美國途中，她聽到維也納機場的大喇叭裏喊着她的名字，讓她去找安檢人員。她被帶上一輛巴士，送到一間行李檢查室，接受關於其行程的盤問。她問道：“你們爲什麼要攔下我？”回答是：“嗯，你知道，你的名字出現在美國政府的一份名單上，而且你的威脅分數真的很高。”

她的威脅分數如果當時算高的話，如今就肯定直上雲霄了。波伊特拉斯在世界上最大規模的間諜泄密事件——美國泄密者愛德華•斯諾登(Edward Snowden)曝光美國大規模電子監聽計劃——中扮演了關鍵角色。去年，斯諾登把自己從美國網絡情報機構——國家安全局(NSA)拿走的珍貴文件只委託給了2名記者，波伊特拉斯便是其中之一。她還是《第四公民》(Citizenfour)的導演，這部紀錄片講述了她遇到斯諾登的經過，有望獲得奧斯卡2014年最佳紀錄片獎。

波伊特拉斯現在認爲，她從早到晚都處在監視之下。“我像一顆在幕後被點亮的聖誕樹，”她相當從容地說，“這意味着，他們很可能有個圖表，上面顯示了我接觸的人。”她在柏林接受採訪，那裏是她現在的居住地。秋天柔和的陽光灑進窗內，淡淡地照亮了她。她看起來比52歲的實際年齡年輕些，說話時手勢很多。如果說她對日常生活受到無時無刻的監視感到憂慮，那麼她至少沒有表現出來。“我面臨的選擇是，要不說‘好吧，我會停止做這類工作’，你懂的，因爲這種騷擾真的很煩人，或者說‘我會繼續這麼做’。”
維也納機場事件發生的不久前，波伊特拉斯剛剛完成了《伊拉克，我的祖國》(My Country, My Country)的製作。這部2006年的紀錄片敘述了在薩達姆•侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)被推翻後，伊拉克普通人在美國佔領下的生活。該片獲得奧斯卡提名，也導致美國情報機構把波伊特拉斯列入她現在所知的“觀察名單”——美國有關部門試圖追蹤的人員名單。接下來是另一部可能激怒了美國政府的紀錄片——《誓言》(The Oath)。這部2010年的影片講述了爲奧薩馬•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)當司機和保鏢的也門兩兄弟，其中一人後來成了關塔那摩灣(Guantánamo Bay)的在押人員。
在維也納第一次被盤問之後，她又在美國不同的機場被盤問了40來次。波伊特拉斯的電腦、筆記簿、手機都曾被扣押，有時數週後纔拿回。她說，她本來以爲，當官員們意識到她“只是個電影人”之後，就會從名單上刪除她的名字。但事實不是這樣。“於是，我在機場變得比較不客氣，邊回答問話邊作筆記，堅持自己作爲記者的權利。”
去年斯諾登與她聯繫時，她很快意識到，他的故事可能引發的軒然大波會超過她以往做過的任何事。“當我意識到斯諾登所言屬實時，我當然害怕。我的意思是，這顯然會很危險——會激怒世界上一些最強大的人。”
當時，這位31歲電腦專家的電子文檔包含了他從NSA拿走的超過100萬份文件。斯諾登在2013年5月逃往香港之前是NSA的合同工。他決定把這些文檔都交給波伊特拉斯和英國《衛報》(Guardian)記者格倫•格林沃爾德(Glenn Greenwald)。藏身於香港一家酒店的他，安排了與二人和另一名《衛報》記者的祕密會面。正如波伊特拉斯在《第四公民》中所描繪的一樣，斯諾登在其狹小房間內花了幾個小時解釋他的祕密，讓三名記者相信他。後來，波伊特拉斯問斯諾登爲何選擇她。他回郵件稱：“你問我爲什麼選你。我沒有選你。是你選了自己。”他指的是她的聲望：他需要一種令人敬畏的力量來確保他的爆料能引起全球的注意，她就是這種力量。
結果就是《衛報》、《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)、德國《明鏡週刊》(Der Spiegel)等媒體發表的一系列報道，詳盡描述了NSA及其在英國、加拿大、澳大利亞和新西蘭的夥伴機構所進行的電子偵察活動。這些報道曝光了窺探美國人谷歌(Google)和雅虎(Yahoo)賬戶的祕密計劃“棱鏡”(Prism)；英國運行的Tempora全球監聽計劃；以及用於篩選海量互聯網數據的電腦過濾器XKeyscore。這些報道曝光了情報人員監視網絡遊戲“魔獸世界”(World of Warcraft)的玩家，窺探援助組織如聯合國兒童基金會(Unicef)和無國界醫生組織(MSF)，甚至竊聽德國總理安格拉•默克爾(Angela Merkel)的手機。
這些爆料立刻引發衝擊波。在美國，有人指責斯諾登爲“叛徒”，也有人贊其爲“英雄”。當局以間諜罪對其提出刑事控罪，指控其幫助美國的敵人。華盛頓方面希望將斯諾登從俄羅斯引渡回國。斯諾登在與波伊特拉斯見面幾天後便前往俄羅斯並尋求保護。
然而，美國總統巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)也命令對NSA的工作流程進行評估，評估結果提出了一系列加強法庭審覈的建議。波伊特拉斯稱：“關於NSA事件，其中一個有意思的看點在於這件事是如何跨越政治界線的。我們看到，對此氣憤填膺的既有民主黨人也有共和黨人。”在其他國家，對斯諾登的支持要大得多，特別是德國。該國政界人士對默克爾手機被監聽極爲憤怒，輿論對侵犯隱私也尤爲關切。
波伊特拉斯的早年人生經歷對這種全球戲劇性事件沒有什麼鋪墊。她在馬薩諸塞州波士頓的一個富裕家庭長大。她不願談論自己的家庭，但公開記錄顯示，她的有錢的父母向麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的醫學研究捐贈了2000萬美元。年輕的波伊特拉斯在畢業後來到舊金山，在那裏當了一段時間的糕點主廚，隨後開始攻讀電影研究專業。她來到紐約專門從事紀錄片製作，首部獲獎影片是《旗幟之爭》(Flag Wars)，講述俄亥俄州哥倫布市的中產階層化。
對波伊特拉斯來說，“9/11”恐怖襲擊發生後，一切都變了。她回憶道：“我覺得，這個國家發生的事情真的令人不安，對此我想要說些什麼。”她越來越擔憂美國政府的迴應，包括關塔那摩灣的在押人員待遇問題。她開始製作有爭議的影片，這讓她成爲全球最著名的的紀錄片製作人之一。
儘管獲得奧斯卡獎的呼聲很高，但她表示，獲獎並不是意義所在；電影本身才是。波伊特拉斯不相信各國政府因斯諾登的曝光而有太大改變。她說：“有很多表面文章，各種委員會提出許多建議，但這些政策沒有根本上的改變。就具體的政策改變而言，或許默克爾的電話現在沒有遭到竊聽。但我不肯定有什麼大的變化。”
因此監聽程度還和過去一樣？波伊特拉斯認爲，或許由於擔心面臨法律訴訟，針對那些沒有涉嫌有不當行爲的目標的監視“很可能有所收斂”。“我猜，現在情報機構的人在監聽前會三思。”但她對斯諾登曝光的整體影響看法積極得多。她說：“這些報道在全球範圍……改變了人們對這些問題的觀念和認識。”
波伊特拉斯表示，由於擔心與美國政府合作可能讓它們喪失業務，谷歌、蘋果(Apple)和Facebook等科技公司“在保護客戶隱私方面正在做出切實的重大改變”。“因此技術行業正在出現那類轉變，而且我認爲轉變將會繼續。它們將爲客戶提供加密和隱私保護”。
波伊特拉斯尤其對德國的事態發展感到高興——她自2012年（那是在她開始製作《第四公民》之前）以來住在德國，因爲她認爲在美國工作風險過大。但她對英國的批評很尖銳——由於擔心被捕，她拒絕去英國，即便爲了推介《第四公民》也不例外。“我的律師非常擔憂和小心，因此我沒有去過英國”。
她補充稱：“沒錯，我會回美國，但美國有所不同。我的意思是，美國有保護媒體的憲法《第一修正案》(First Amendment)。美國政府從未因記者發表機密信息而對其進行追捕。”
在英國，《官方保密法》(Official Secrets Act)不受約束的觸角範圍令她卻步，尤其是在官員們闖入《衛報》辦公室，下令毀掉與斯諾登相關的電腦設備之後。電影中記錄了那一刻——錘子將電子設備砸成碎片。她略微提高聲音說：“我的意思是，得知這個消息令我震驚，沒有法律保護新聞機構；如果沒有健康運轉的自由媒體，就沒有對發生事件的歷史記憶。”
像斯諾登本人一樣，波伊特拉斯認爲祕密監視在某些情況下是正當的——例如疑似的恐怖分子陰謀或核擴散。“但它不應是巨大的拖網，對全體人口進行疑神疑鬼的監聽。我們生活在實行法治的民主國家，這些監聽計劃繞開了法治。”
她承認監視改變了她。她不僅對實際事務極爲謹慎，比如加密電子郵件，並且擁有兩臺電腦：一臺用於工作，另一臺作一般用途。當她收到斯諾登的郵件時，她重讀了喬治•奧威爾(George Orwell)的《一九八四》(Nineteen Eighty-Four)。她被書中的英雄溫斯頓•史密斯(Winston Smith)試圖在不受政府監視的情況下寫日記的情節打動。她回憶說：“隨之而來的可以說是寒蟬效應，當他真正坐下來寫的時候，他居然無法表達自己的真實感受。我感受到了這一點，雖然沒到那種程度，但是這種寒蟬效應是存在的，你意識到，嗯，既然我認爲自己的電腦被入侵了，那我還要在電子郵件裏寫私人的事情嗎？所以，我開始使用鉛筆和紙，諸如此類的事情。”
但她引以自豪的是，她信任所有參與制作斯諾登電影的人，她最密切的同事中多數是女性。當她在柏林的首映式上介紹她的團隊時，首批出場站到臺上的15人中9位是女性；她說，她選擇這些人不是因爲她們是女性，而是因爲她們是“絕對最優秀的人”，而且女性拍攝紀錄片比在好萊塢作用更大。“有這麼多傑出的女性紀錄片導演，所以我不覺得自己是獨一無二的。”
她揣測，這是否是因爲製作紀錄片的組織規模比好萊塢大片小得多。“我覺得你可以走自己的路，而無需通過官僚體制的各個層級。我不知道。”
波伊特拉斯把《第四公民》看作她關於美國實力三部曲的第三部；前兩部是她拍攝的關於伊拉克和關塔那摩的紀錄片。她說，現在討論下一步可能做什麼還“爲時尚早”。但她正在爲2016年紐約惠特尼美國藝術博物館(Whitney Museum of American Art)的一個基於電影的展覽做準備，這個展覽將以“不同的方式展現相同的主題”。
“說實話，我不會停止關心這些問題。9/11事件已經過去13年，但我們仍在阿富汗打仗，仍有一些政策在推動美國向着我認爲不對的方向前行。我們在透明度和政府上有點偏離了根本的道德原則。”這是一個嚴肅的看法，可是像波伊特拉斯那樣製作紀錄片本來就是一項嚴肅的事業。斯諾登選得很精明。