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Does anyone know if "Citizen Four" (what Snowden signed his first email with) is a reference to anything?
by desdiv 12y ago
Does anyone know if "Citizen Four" (what Snowden signed his first email with) is a reference to anything?
- jessaustin 12y agoPossibly to the Fourth Estate? It would have been clear to Snowden that the clergy and commoners aren't doing enough to control our kings and princes.
- mmanfrin 12y agoFourth Estate seems very plausible. The idea of the 'Fourth Estate' is that the media (the fourth estate) keeps an eye on the government. Whether this is the intention or the 4th Amendment is the intention, the other of the two is a nice coincidence.
- nitam 12y agoPerhaps this: "The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause."
- josu 12y agoThere is also a Fourth Citizen in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 http://www.jstor.org/stable/802843 I don't see the connection, though.
- csdrane 12y agoI wondered whether this paid homage to other notable leakers before him.
- tymekpavel 12y agoEllsberg, Felt, Manning, Snowden?
- curiousgeorgio 12y agoWhen written as one word, "Citizenfour" as in the movie's title (not sure if he actually used it like that), my first thought was possibly a connection to "carrefour," which is French for a road intersection. The 4th amendment theory seems more plausible, but a crossroads provides some interesting imagery in ralation to Snowden's intentions vs the current course of mass surveillance.
- desdiv 12y agoThe exact wording he used was "Citizen Four", two words.
- idlewan 12y agoI read it as "Citizen 4". Then, if you reverse the order ("4 Citizen"), it becomes close to "for the citizens".