A Good American

Thrilling and brilliant insight into one of the best code-breakers of all time

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. The tool was perfect - except for one thing: it was way too cheap. Therefor NSA leadership, who had fallen into the hands of industry, dumped it - three weeks prior to 9/11. In a secret test-run of the program against the pre-9/11-NSA database in early 2002 the program immediately found the terrorists. This is the story of former Technical director of NSA, Bill Binney, and a program called ThinThread.

A Good American was nominated for the Dox:Award and the Politiken Audience Award at CPH:DOX 2015. Friedrich Moser has previously directed The Brussel Business (2012), that dealt with PR and lobbyism at the heart of the EU capital. Bill Binney - the main character of A Good American - also appeared in Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning Citizenfour, that screened at Doc Lounge in Spring 2015.

A Good American is presented in collaboration with Moving Docs - a EDN initiative supported by Creative Europe, with the aim to create innovative outreach strategies and provide opportunities for urban and rural European audiences to enjoy regular screenings of documentary films through a wide variety of media and platforms.