A Good American

This film reveals that the inner workings of our intelligence agencies and the NSA in particular, often place the security of US Citizens below the motive for profit. It shows that these intelligence agencies can be more fearful of embarrassment than of attacks by extremist organizations. It has the courage to state facts and name names. It describes how software already in place at the NSA that actually predicted the 9/11 attacks was totally shut down mere months before the actual attack occurred.

I read the following description before watching this documentary and it really piqued my interest:

""A Good American" tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution."

I saw no evidence their system could magically pick up any electronic signal in the world.

As someone with a technical background I saw nothing more than network packet sniffing.

The so called "graph" or sphere with trillions of connections was an interesting concept but seems implausible and there was no detail on how they were compiling, storing and querying this data. The whole film seemed to lack any detail and therefore felt dull and unimpressive.

In fact the most interesting part I paused the screen to look at was a totally basic flow chart outlining a vague data capture process that essentially said "if the user is American, do nothing, otherwise log details". Hardly groundbreaking research.

Most of the "experts" were pretty unconvincing. The main protagonist kept referring to the software developers as "the computer guys", like he'd never seen a computer before in his life.

"A Good American" tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.

Variety called the film "compelling if only semi-persuasive," and said that it was marred by bias toward William Binney. The Guardian described the film as a "fascinating, conspiracy theorising documentary", and said that while "some of the film's content has been aired before, the inside experience has not been voiced in such a collective manner, with (director) Moser joining the dots just as Binney might connect his metadata." I tend to side with Variety here. Although I enjoyed the documentary, it does have two major flaws. One, it really only tells Binney's side. That might be alright, but it allows the idea to be pushed that 9/11 would have been prevented, which cannot be said with as much confidence as he wishes. And two, for a film about a super-smart computer and global terror, it is a rather boring documentary. This should be gripping, but it was really rather mundane.

A third point could be added... why make this in 2015 (and release it in 2017)? While no less interesting today than ten years ago, it does not seem as timely.

So this is not some gripping thriller. It's reality, it's a documentary. It narrates how some very smart, ethical people in the intelligence agencies were trying to stay one step ahead of some very dangerous people. If this were turned into some fictional story you could make it fantastically interesting in the hands of a good script writer I'm sure. People who reviewed this movie poorly, fail to see the significance of this. They likely believe that essentially "the story of 9/11 is how some foreigners brought the military and intelligence community of the greatest super power in human history to its knees". You can discount my opinion (in quotes) and it's significance if you are so inclined. But you shouldn't discount the fascinating & informative value of the story told here and the quality of the production.

Let's be honest, A good American is not the easiest documentary to watch, with alot of things that are to us, 'the normal human beings', difficult to understand. It's basically about Big Brother watching us, in everything we do, as soon as we are using an electronic device. The right to privacy might be written somewhere but the truth is that they couldn't care less about the right of your privacy. For brainwashed America it should be a mandatory watch, so that maybe people would open their eyes, on how the whole system there is just controling the masses and making as much money as they can, well only for the chosen few then, not for you and me, the common people. It's not about your safety, they don't really care about that, it's a bonus that's all. It's all about greed and power. That exactly people of 'good will' like the former technical director of the NSA William Binney, that created a system that could have prevented 9/11, get harassed by their own government is just a shame and disgraceful. Not that I'm a big fan of their system, far from, but at least they didn't do it out of greed or wanting to get rich, they did it to save humanity from atrocities. So yes A Good American is worth a watch, a watch until the end, so that you can truely understand the whole picture on how corrupt the whole American system is.