A CHILLING TALE
I Spy With My 5 Eyes an interactive peek into shadowy world of digital surveillance
To watch I Spy With My 5 Eyes, visit ispydoc.com
Superficially at least, there may be a rich irony to Justin Pemberton’s intriguing interactive documentary I Spy With My 5 Eyes.
The Canadian-New Zealand coproduction is a chilling cautionary tale about the changing nature of surveillance, making a convincing case that our daily actions are leaving glaring digital footprints that government spy agencies can easily access.
I Spy With My 5 Eyes is also interactive — visitors are encouraged to share their views on this controversial topic.
So, in essence, aren’t people being asked to go online and share their views about the dangers of sharing too much online?
Apparently, it’s not the first time the New Zealand filmmaker has had this pointed out to him.
“Certainly, if you are someone who is of interest to the NSA or the Canada wing of (the) Five Eyes (Alliance) or the New Zealand one or whatever, they would love to see that you have visited this website,” says Pemberton from his home in Auckland. “On the other hand, on this website itself isn’t containing information on how to make a bomb. So it’s not subversive anyway. It’s interesting, because a few people have mentioned that.
“But the big thing is, and we talked about this at one point, making sure people didn’t have to sign in or log in to leave a comment, that they didn’t have to give us their email addresses or connect via Twitter or via Facebook. It was important to make sure that it didn’t in itself feel like a bit of a data-mining exercise.
“So really, it’s been kept quite clean, quite minimal.”
Five Eyes is the long-standing, although still shadowy, intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and America. Dating back to the Second World War, this intelligence community has changed with the evolution of technology. The documentary argues that since 9/11, the agencies have operated more aggressively and with little oversight by elected governments.
“Ultimately, what I want is that people begin to think more beyond the immediate,” Pemberton says. “Those arguments of ‘Oh well, I’m not doing anything anyway, why should I care if someone wants to watch?’ We don’t seem to think beyond our personal right now. There’s not sense of time horizon.”
Pemberton and his crew travelled to all of the Five Eyes nations to interview a wide array of subjects. There are the usual lineup of activists, investigative journalists, political scientists, futurists and anthropologists. But the filmmaker also talks to figures such as Rhys Ball, a former spy with New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service; General Michael Hayden, former director of both the CIA and National Security Agency; and NSA employee turned whistleblower William Binney.
These experts discuss the evolution of intelligence in the digital age, the dangers of hyperconnected technology, how the War on Terror relies on “wholesale surveillance” as opposed to infiltration and undercover work and how the ever-expanding spying apparatus has generally led to a culture of self-censorship. It all offers an unsettling view on the increasingly precarious state of our privacy.
What sets I Spy with My 5 Eyes apart is that interactive component, which puts viewers in the driver’s seat and allows them to delve deeper into subjects that interest them, with a tap of their mouse.
Pemberton enlisted the Toronto-based digital production agency Jam3, to collaborate on I Spy With My 5 Eyes, having them design a platform where visitors can zoom in on topics for a deeper look as they watch the narrative unfold over five chapters. The “dig deeper” moments are stand-alone videos that add context to the main chapter they are attached to. Pablo Vio, creative director of Jam3, says filmmakers and funding bodies are recognizing there is a shift in the way content is consumed.
“Older generations like ourselves may still watch documentaries, whether it’s on Netflix on in the theatre,” Vio says. “The younger generation is obviously spending a lot more time on YouTube and Snapchat and consuming content on social media. A lot of filmmakers, or storytellers in general, have to be looking at other options. I think it is changing. I think we are all being tasked to tell shorter stories or tell stories that can live on many different platforms.”