Imminent Threat

Academy Award nominee James Cromwell presents a documentary on the War on Terror’s impact on civil liberties.

For the past 15 years, the phrase ‘War on Terror’ has been used to justify everything from mass surveillance and spying to the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists without evidence or trial.

Throughout history, governments have applied security surveillance programmes to people they considered a political threat. But surveillance on the scale of the clandestine Prism programme, which collected the data of foreign nationals, is unprecedented. Another new development is the call for the journalists who collaborated with Edward Snowden to be prosecuted. It seems that in many areas, America operates on secret interpretations of laws, explained in confidential memos few people see.

What are the boundaries of the ‘war on terror’? How can we reconcile civil liberties with security?