Episode
Frontline: United States of Secrets (1)
Overview
The history of the National Security Agency's unprecedented surveillance program is investigated.
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 32
- Episode
- Episode 9
- Air date
- 2014-05-13
Episode context
United States of Secrets (1) is Episode 9 in Season 32 of Frontline. It aired on 2014-05-13.
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Episode 8: Prison State
There are roughly 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S., with a disproportionate number coming from a few city neighborhoods. More than two years in the making, Prison State takes an intimate look at the cycle of incarceration in America, and one state’s effort to reverse the trend.
Episode 10: United States of Secrets (2)
The role of Silicon Valley in the National Security Agency's surveillance program is explored.
More episodes from this season
Episode 7: Solitary Nation
With extraordinary access, award-winning producer and director Dan Edge (Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown, Kill/Capture, The Wounded Platoon) takes you to the epicenter of the raging debate about prison reform. Solitary Nation brings you an up-close, graphic look at a solitary confinement unit in Maine’s maximum security prison.
Episode 11: The Battle for Ukraine / Syria: Arming the Rebels
FRONTLINE draws on personal and dramatic footage to reveal the deep-seated hatreds between right-wing Ukrainian nationalists with historic ties to the Nazis and violent pro-Russian separatists vying for control of the country.
FRONTLINE finds Syrian rebel fighters who say they’re being secretly armed and trained by the United States.
Episode 6: TB Silent Killer
Tuberculosis was once thought to be a disease of the past. But with virulent new drug-resistant strains emerging faster than ever, TB — passed simply by a cough or a sneeze — is the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease on the planet. In TB Silent Killer, FRONTLINE presents an unforgettable portrait of the lives at the pandemic’s epicenter.
Episode 12: Omarina's Story / Separate and Unequal
When FRONTLINE first met Omarina Cabrera back in 2012 for the documentary Middle School Moment, she was a struggling student at Middle School 244 in the Bronx. Today, she’s excelling at an elite prep school in New England. In part two of our July 15 hour on education, class and race in America, FRONTLINE revisits Omarina as part of our continued examination of a groundbreaking program to stem the dropout crisis in America’s high-poverty schools.
Sixty years after the Supreme Court declared separate schools for black and white children unconstitutional, school segregation is making a comeback. What’s behind the growing racial divide in American schools — and what’s the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education?
Episode 5: Secrets of the Vatican
Secrets of the Vatican tells the epic, inside story of the collapse of the Benedict papacy — and illuminates the extraordinary challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to reform the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, root out corruption, and chart a new course for the troubled Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers.
Episode 13: Losing Iraq
In a special developing report, FRONTLINE examines the unfolding chaos in Iraq and how the U.S. is being pulled back into the conflict. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and military leaders, the investigative team behind The Lost Year in Iraq, The Torture Question, Endgame and Bush’s War traces the U.S. role from the 2003 invasion to the current violence — exploring how Iraq itself is coming undone, how we got here, what went wrong and what happens next.
Episode 4: Generation Like
Thanks to social media, today’s teens are able to directly interact with their culture — artists, celebrities, movies, brands, and even one another — in ways never before possible. But is that real empowerment? Or do marketers still hold the upper hand? In Generation Like, author and FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff (The Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders) explores how the perennial teen quest for identity and connection has migrated to social media — and exposes the game of cat-and-mouse that corporations are playing with these young consumers. Do kids think they’re being used? Do they care? Or does the perceived chance to be the next big star make it all worth it?
Episode 14: Hunting Boko Haram / Ebola Outbreak
When the radical Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls in April, it sparked international outrage and worldwide pressure to #BringBackOurGirls. But now, FRONTLINE investigates evidence that in the fight against Boko Haram, members of the Nigerian military and state-sponsored militias have been committing atrocities against suspects, many of them innocent civilians.
FRONTLINE travels to the epicenter of the Ebola crisis to find out how and why the outbreak has spiraled out of control — and to track the fight to contain the virus’s deadly spread. With special access to teams fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone, FRONTLINE, in collaboration with the Channel 4 foreign affairs series Unreported World, brings you an up-close, on-the-ground look at how and why the outbreak is endangering civilians and health-care workers, overwhelming hospitals and getting worse.
Episode 3: Syria's Second Front / Children of Aleppo
Three years in to Syria’s civil war, rebel forces aren’t just fighting the Assad regime. They’re also vying for control against a group known as ISIS. FRONTLINE correspondent Muhammad Ali — a Syrian native himself, and one of only a few reporters to make it safely into, and then out of, Syria’s northern front in recent months — delivers a gripping report from inside a country in turmoil.
A startling portrait of everyday life in a war zone, through the eyes of children.
Episode 15: The Trouble with Antibiotics
FRONTLINE investigates the widespread use of antibiotics in food animals and whether it is fueling the growing crisis of antibiotic resistance in people. Also this hour: An exclusive interview with the family of a young man who died in a nightmare bacteria outbreak that swept through a hospital at the National Institutes of Health.