Plot Summary

Last year Edward Snowden downloaded tens of thousands of top-secret documents from a highly secure government computer network. The revelations that followed touched off a fierce debate over the massive surveillance operations conducted by the National Security Agency. Through exclusive interviews with intelligence insiders, cabinet officials, and government whistle-blowers, the film reveals how the U.S. government came to monitor the communications of millions of Americans and to collect billions of records on ordinary people around the world.