Criminal Adaptations

Snowden

Criminal Adaptations Season 5 Episode 14

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The movie Snowden (2016) presents the protagonist as a reluctant whistleblower who sacrifices everything to expose government surveillance – but how closely does the film match the real man and case? In part one of our two-part season finale, we break down Oliver Stone’s biopic, staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, alongside the true story of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor whose leaked documents revealed the scope of mass surveillance in the United States and beyond. 

We examine Snowden’s background, motivations, and personal relationships as portrayed on screen, then compare them to the documented timeline of events – from his work inside the intelligence community to the moment he decided to go public. We also look at what the movie emphasizes for emotional impact, what it simplifies or leaves out, and how political beliefs shape the way this story is told. Ultimately, this episode asks whether Snowden (2016) is a faithful retelling, a political statement, or something in between – and why the real-world consequences of the case continue to matter today.

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Theme: DARKNESS (feat. EdKara) by Ghost148


Ashley:

Welcome to Criminal Adaptations, the show where we take a look at some of your favorite movies and the true crime stories that inspired them. I'm Ashley. I'm a clinical psychologist and forensic evaluator in the state of Oregon.

Remi:

And I'm Remy. I spent over a decade working in the film and television industry in Los Angeles, California.

Ashley:

Welcome everyone to our first of two whistleblower season finale episodes. But before we dive in today, Remy, how are you doing?

Remi:

I am doing pretty swell, all things considered. Excited for another two-part season finale. I can't believe we have made it this far. It's a lot of episodes we have under our belt at this point, and a lot more coming in the future. Now, this season we are doing our whistleblower season finale. So that means for the next two episodes, we are going to be focusing on people that blew the whistle, so to speak, by leaking top secret information to the media.

Ashley:

And we are starting with Oliver Stone's Snowden about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who's probably the most famous whistleblower.

Remi:

Him and Julian Assage.

Ashley:

And we're doing that because, well, this came before the next one we'll talk about next week. Remy, when you hear the name Edward Snowden, what's the first word that comes to mind?

Remi:

Probably NSA. I think that might be cheating because it is three words technically, but yeah, if I hear the word Snowden, the first thing I think about is the NSA, because I'm sort of embarrassed to admit, I had never heard of the NSA before the whole Snowden scandal blew up. So I was kind of in the dark until Snowden decided to pull the curtain back on all of this.

Ashley:

I also think of NSA and of course whistleblower. Probably the other word that comes to mind is Russia, and y'all will know why shortly.

Remi:

Did you follow the real Edward Snowden story when it was happening? It wasn't that long ago.

Ashley:

It wasn't. It was in 2013, and I honestly don't recall following it at all. I was kind of in college. I was a, I would have been a junior in college, so my life revolved around things other than the news.

Remi:

I followed the story in passing. So I guess I knew a lot of the broad strokes, but definitely not all of the details.

Ashley:

Did you change your online behavior at all after the story broke?

Remi:

I did start using a VPN, which is a private encrypted internet connection that hides your internet activity. But beyond that, I haven't really changed very much because there's only so much you can do in this sort of situation. I mean, as our audience will find out soon, they are able to listen to us and watch us at any time of day, anywhere almost. So it's almost impossible to avoid.

Ashley:

It really is. And if you don't believe your internet activity is being monitored, then how do you explain all those targeted ads? There's been so many times where we've been like just talking about something, and all of a sudden, like the next YouTube video that will pop up will be something we've were just talking about, and it freaks me out every single time.

Remi:

I remember a few years back when I was still on Facebook. I am no longer on social media for personal reasons, but at some point I learned a hack that allowed me to see anyone who had visited my profile page and what day they had visited, what time they had visited, and all of this stuff that kind of seemed like I was invading their privacy, even though it was my profile. And it's just interesting to find out those little details. And I feel like if I told certain people that I knew that they visited my page a dozen times in a certain week, they might get a little freaked out by that.

Ashley:

And we will learn all about metadata and how much you can learn about a person from it.

Remi:

The movie Snowden was directed by Oliver Stone, who is primarily known for making controversial films focusing on war, politics, and corruption, mainly in the United States. We will be covering a few of his films in the future, including JFK and Nixon. He also did Platoon, W, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street, and one of my favorites, Naturalborn Killers. He also made a film called U-Turn, which no one ever talks about or remembers, and it wasn't really about anything, but I have a soft spot for that weird movie. Do you have a favorite Oliver Stone film, Ashley? We've seen a couple of them.

Ashley:

Probably Naturalborn Killers. That is a fun, wild out there movie.

Remi:

I could have sworn you were gonna say Wall Street 2 Money Never Sleeps, but I guess I called that one wrong. Snowden is played in this film by Joseph Gordon Levitt, who I actually met once back when I was working as a PA on the 2007 film Stop Loss, and he is just a pleasure, I must say. Very, very nice dude.

Ashley:

I'm jealous. He seems like he is just so polite and charming.

Remi:

And I am a big fan of his. He hasn't done any big projects in a while, but he was in 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50-50, Don John, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, which I think is underappreciated. And he also had a forgettable role in The Dark Knight Rises, which we can forgive him for, I guess.

Ashley:

And of course, there's my personal favorite, 10 Things I Hate About You.

Remi:

We re-watch that one almost on a yearly basis, I think. It is a true classic. And I also remember seeing Joseph Gordon Levitt when he was a little kid on 30 Rock and Angels in the Outfield. And we just saw him last week in the Demi Moore Alec Baldwin movie The Juror. And spoiler alert for The Juror. It stinks. So yeah, he has been working for a really long time, and we still find him popping up in old movies that we're watching today.

Ashley:

There's also a certain director he works with a lot, isn't there?

Remi:

Absolutely. He has recurring collaborations with director Ryan Johnson, including two of my favorite films, Brick and Looper. He also played a feature extra in The Brothers Bloom, and provides the voice of the alien Sloan Lowe in Star Wars The Last Jedi, which were all directed by Johnson. However, lately he has been doing really minor cameos in the Knives Out series that has been going to Netflix.

Ashley:

Yes, he actually is the hourly dong in The Glass Onion.

Snowden (clip):

Oh, what is that? That's the hourly dong.

Remi:

Truly one of his best performances. But now that we have talked all about the director and the star of the film, how about we get into the actual film, Snowden? Facebook? Is that possible? Dude, Facebook's my bitch. Seriously? Snowden is a 2016 American film directed and written by Oliver Stone, co-written by Kieran Fitzgerald, based on the books The Snowden Files by Luke Harding, and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Cucerina. The film stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as Edward Snowden, alongside Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Oliphant, Rice Iphens, and Nicolas Cage?

Ashley:

What? I had no idea he was in this.

Remi:

We'll get to him in just a bit. He was a pleasant surprise. Despite what many would assume, the idea of making a feature film about Edward Snowden and the NSA did not originally come from Oliver Stone or even a studio pitch. Stone was approached indirectly by parties connected to the real story, and at first he was hesitant about taking on the project, since he had previously been criticized in the media over the tone of his earlier political films. Stone was also already in the process of developing another controversial biopic about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. with Jamie Foxx attached as the lead.

Ashley:

Oh wow, that would have been fascinating. I think Jamie Foxx would have done a really good job. What happened to it?

Remi:

Well, Stone later confirmed that once he committed to Snowden, the MLK project was set aside and basically lost all momentum. Which sucks. We talked about this in our Malcolm X episode. That a film about Martin Luther King Jr.'s life is long overdue. I know they made films like Selma and a few others, but I would like something more all-encompassing of the full story of MLK. And I think Jamie Foxx would have done a brilliant job. Oliver Stone's stance on the Snowden project began to change after a series of direct real-world connections to the Snowden story itself. First, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who worked with Laura Poitris to break the NSA leaks, reached out to Stone for advice on dealing with the fallout and pressure of how a story that big would be received over time. A few months later, Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucharina, contacted Stone through his producer and set up a private meeting between the two in Moscow, while Kucharina was promoting his book Time of the Octopus. Great title. The novel itself is a semi-fictionalized account inspired by the real events, and Kocherina believed that Oliver Stone was the perfect filmmaker to translate the material for a wider audience. While Time of the Octopus wasn't strictly factual, Stone found the material compelling enough for him to finally begin seriously considering making the Snowden film. Stone also met with Laura Poitress, who was working on her own documentary on Snowden called Citizen Four.

Ashley:

And FYI, a lot of the footage from that documentary is taken from the time he was in Hong Kong right after he leaked the files.

Remi:

During her and Stone's conversation, Stone suggested that Poitriss's documentary be released after the feature film, believing that a narrative version would reach a much broader audience. Poitress later said that she was offended by this suggestion, and the two never spoke again after that. Starting in January 2014, Stone began meeting Snowden in person in Russia, and while Snowden was initially cautious about the idea of a film, Stone returned twice more later that spring. After those meetings, Snowden agreed to participate, though he had no script approval and wasn't paid for his involvement. Snowden had seen Stone's documentary work on American history, which helped establish enough trust for the project to move forward.

Oliver Stone:

It's not just about your phone or this or that. It's about a larger issue about cyber warfare, which is going on now, and about drone warfare, and about control, control really of the world.

Ashley:

Wow, nine trips to Russia. He was definitely on the government's watch list.

Remi:

And he hasn't made another feature film since this one. Very curious. But I think after we do this episode, we'll end up on a watch list too, so I should just shut up. On June 2nd, 2014, it was officially announced that Oliver Stone and producer Moritz Bormann had acquired the rights to the Snowden Files, with Stone officially set to write and direct the film. A little over a week later, on June 10th, Stone also picked up the rights to Time of the Octopus, with both books essentially becoming the foundation for Stone's screenplay. Later that year, on September 21st, Joseph Gordon Levitt entered Talks to play Edward Snowden, and his casting was then confirmed that November. Levitt has said that he actually knew very little about Snowden when Stone first approached him for the role. So, step one was doing his own research to learn more about who Snowden was and what he had done. After digging deeper into Snowden's story, Levitt became even more intrigued, so eventually flew to Moscow to meet with Snowden personally before filming began. The visit was arranged by Snowden's legal team and lasted about four hours, with Snowden's longtime partner, Lindsay Mills, additionally present for part of it. Levitt has said that the meeting wasn't really about politics, but more about getting a feel for who Snowden is as a person, by studying his mannerisms and discussing his convictions, strengths, and weaknesses, so that he could ground his performance in something real. In interviews, Levitt explained that doing his own research and meeting Snowden gave him a much stronger personal connection to the story and a clearer understanding of why Snowden made the choices he did, which is what ultimately led to Levitt accepting the part. To further embody his character, Levitt analyzed Snowden's speech patterns by recording and practicing segments of his dialogue and delivery from the documentary Citizen 4. Now, Ashley, I am going to play you an example of the real Edward Snowden's voice first, and then Joseph Gordon Levitt's interpretation of that voice. So here is the real Ed Snowden's voice. Now here is Joseph Gordon Levitt as Edward Snowden.

Snowden (clip):

Well, in the first part of my day, I was building this round-the-clock backup system called Epic Shelter. So if there was some catastrophe, say uh terrorists burned down every embassy and NSA post in the Middle East.

Ashley:

Wow, I must say he did a really good job. And I did actually watch a big chunk of the first clip that you had played while I was looking for my own clips. And in that, Edward Snowden does say a lot of uh uh um and it's because he's incredibly nervous, it's very scary what he's doing in that video. And Joseph Gordon Levitt recreates that in the clip we just heard.

Remi:

Joseph Gordon Levitt makes some bold acting decisions with some of his choices, and his voice in this film does take a little getting used to, but you don't notice it after a while. And I think it's a pretty good representation of the real Snowden's voice, and he's done voices in a few other films that belong to real people as well. In Looper, he was basically impersonating Bruce Willis, and he had his facial mannerisms, his squinty eyes, he had him down perfect, and he also played a French tightrope walker in the film The Walk, and he nailed that one too. All of the voices took a little getting used to at first, but by the end, you just believe him as that character. Margot Robby was originally offered the role of Snowden's partner, Lindsay Mills, but had to pass due to scheduling conflicts. I don't know if I could have pictured her in that role, personally.

Ashley:

Too hot.

Remi:

Shailen Woodley ultimately took on the role after director Greg Araki, who had worked with Woodley previously on White Bird in a Blizzard, recommended her to Stone. Because Woodley wasn't able to meet the real Lindsay Mills in person before filming started, she built her entire performance from publicly available material, including Mills' blog posts and social media, giving her insight into Mills' personality and life throughout the years. Woodley also learned pole dancing in order to portray Mills' background as a yoga instructor and acrobat, though the actual scene serves little purpose in the final film. Woodley said that the story of Snowden and Mills interested her even before she was cast, and that playing Mills meant understanding the emotional complexity of someone whose life was suddenly reshaped by their partner's decisions. Our main man Nicholas Cage makes a brief appearance in the film as former U.S. intelligence officer Hank Forrester. Cage accepted the small role as a favor to Oliver Stone after previously working together on World Trade Center. He only has about three scenes in this film, but he does slip in a bit of caginess.

Ashley:

I'm sure he steals the show as always.

Remi:

I wish there were more clips of his scenes available online. I was looking and could only find one, so that's a bit of a bummer, but I recommend checking out his scenes to anyone that can find them. Before production began, Stone and Levitt traveled to Moscow in 2015 to meet with Edward Snowden, who by then was living there in exile with Lindsay Mills after the US government revoked his passport while he was trying to reach South America. Levitt later commented that Snowden reminded him of tightrope walker Philippe Petit, whom he had recently played in Robert Zemeckis' 2015 film, The Walk. Because no major studio or company was willing to fully back the project, Stone and the producers were initially forced to piece together financing on their own, until money finally came through from France and Germany.

Ashley:

That's because France and Germany were mad at America because of the leaked files.

Remi:

The film was primarily shot in Germany as an international co-production, with the contract signed just eight days before filming began. The budget and schedule were so tight that Stone wasn't able to return to the US for his mother's funeral when she unexpectedly passed away while the production was still in progress.

Ashley:

Wow, I would have said, fuck that. Co-director, secondary director, whatever it's called, you're taking over while I'm gone.

Remi:

That's not how the movie industry works, Ashley. You can have the best reason in the world to not be there one day, but to the producers and people running the show, that reason is never gonna be good enough. You need to be on set. Principal photography kicked off on February 16, 2015, in Munich, Germany. From there, the production moved around quite a bit, filming in Washington, D.C., Hawaii, and Hong Kong, along with some exterior footage shot in Tokyo. Stone chose to shoot most of the film outside of the United States out of concern about possible interference from the NSA, treating the production itself like a potential security target.

Ashley:

Yeah, I can't imagine the NSA was thrilled when they heard this movie was in production.

Remi:

The set reportedly operated with heightened security precautions around communications and files, with Stone even going as far as bringing in cybersecurity specialist Ralph Ekemendia, also known as the Ethical Hacker, to help prevent any leaks.

Ashley:

I think the whole drama behind the story he was telling kind of caused him to be a little paranoid.

Remi:

Yeah, I think he went a bit overboard on some of these security precautions. It's just a movie, Oliver. Other than all that, Stone said that relocating to Munich ended up being a surprisingly positive experience overall.

Ashley:

I believe it. We had a great time in Munich.

Remi:

The Oktoberfest is a blast and high recommend to anyone out there interested. Now, Ashley, are you ready to clear out your browser history and finally get into the nitty gritty metadata of Oliver Stone's Snowden?

Ashley:

I mean, with a line like that, how could I not be?

Remi:

Our story begins with a title card stating that the following is a dramatization of actual events that occurred between 2004 and 2013. We then fade in on Hong Kong on Monday, June 3, 2013. Laura Poitress, played by Melissa Leo, and Glenn Greenwald, played by Zachary Quinto, are waiting near a cartoonish alligator statue in the middle of a crowded public space when Edward Snowden arrives, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, visibly on edge, fidgeting with a Rubik's Cube, scanning his surroundings.

Ashley:

I don't mention this in my part, but that Rubik's Cube is what he told the journalist to look for.

Remi:

After a brief passphrase exchange to confirm their identities, the three cross the street to the Mira Hotel and head up to Snowden's room. Once inside, Snowden takes Glenn and Laura's cell phones and locks them in a microwave. Then, after ensuring that there is only one remaining recording device present, he takes a seat and formally introduces himself as the interview begins.

Snowden (clip):

My name is Edward Joseph Snowden. I'm 29 years old. I work as a private contractor for the NSA. I've also worked as a private contractor for the CIA and directly for the agency. I've worked in various jobs in the intelligence industry for the last nine years. I've been a systems engineer, uh been a solutions consultant, and a senior advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Remi:

The training is intense, brutal, and unforgiving, but Snowden seems more than willing and capable of taking on the challenge. That all changes one night when he's unexpectedly called out of bed for a late-night training exercise, causing Snowden to leap from his bunk and instantly fracture both of his legs. Ouch! In the hospital, Snowden learns that both his legs had actually been broken for several weeks, and he had just never noticed until hopping out of bed caused his ticking time bomb tibia to finally give way.

Ashley:

So he did notice that something was off, but he put it off because he was scared of being discharged. But then, I can't remember what it is. It might have been this, but there was something that happened. It probably was this, if that's how it's depicted in the film, that caused him to not be able to put it off medical care any longer.

Remi:

So it must have been just like a hairline fracture at first that he exacerbated by ignoring, but I don't know. It seems like it would be very difficult to walk around for several weeks on two broken legs. Since his injuries are so severe, Snowden's doctor authorizes an administrative discharge, releasing him from the military. While recovering in the hospital, Snowden goes online and receives a alert from a dating site called Geekmate.com, notifying him that he has just matched with a woman named Lindsay Mills, played by Shailen Woodley. From there, we cut to Snowden taking a lie detector test as part of his CIA security clearance and recruitment process. We learn that his father is a 30-year Coast Guard veteran, and his mother is a retired admiral who later joined the FBI. So I guess this sort of thing just runs in the Snowden family. He also missed a perfect score on his military aptitude test by a single question, knows a bit of Mandarin and Japanese, and did it all without a high school diploma after dropping out because his family needed money, so he had to start working. After a rigorous interview process, Snowden is hired by senior CIA instructor Corbin O'Brien, played by Rice Ithens, who you probably remember as the wacky roommate from Notting Hill.

Ashley:

That is exactly what I remember him from.

Remi:

Snowden's intelligence career officially begins in 2006, working undercover at The Hill, a high-security CIA training center located somewhere in Virginia. While exploring the facility, Snowden wanders into a classroom and comes face to face with Hank Forrester, played by Nicolas Cage, who appears to be some kind of instructor or engineer or something, I'm not really sure. But the important thing is he has a wall of Rubik's cubes behind him that appear to be different sizes and shapes and maybe collected from around the world, and he gives one of them to Snowden, which becomes a very important thing later on. So we can thank Nicolas Cage for putting all the wheels in motion, I guess. Anyway, Snowden's first formal training session is an aptitude test on communication networks led by Corbin O'Brien, who kicks things off with the following words of encouragement.

Snowden (clip):

Any server, any connection, the modern battlefield is everywhere. Which means you don't have to sit in the ditch eating MREs or dodging water fire. It means that if there is another 9-11, it'll be your fault. Just as the last one was my generation's.

Remi:

Yeah, no pressure, guys. For the test itself, the trainees are tasked with building a covert communications network in their home city, then deploying it, backing it up, destroying it, and restoring it. I am so not tech savvy that half the time in this movie it felt like they were speaking another language. The average completion time is 5 hours, and anyone who takes longer than 8 automatically fails. Snowden finishes the entire test in just 38 minutes by doing a little thinking outside of the box and breaking the sequence, saving a ton of time and effort in the process.

Ashley:

Man, if I was one of his classmates, I'd be so annoyed with him. 38 minutes? That's insane.

Remi:

Yeah, at first I think the teacher believes it's 39 minutes, and Snowden corrects him that it is only 38 minutes. But he really did impress the teacher with this, and I do imagine annoyed a lot of his classmates in the process. Nobody likes a show off. We then cut to Washington, D.C., where Snowden has been messaging Lindsay on geekmate.com and finally arranges to meet her in person at a crowded restaurant.

Ashley:

So he does match with her on a dating site. I can't remember what it's called, but I 100% know it's not Geekmate.com.

Remi:

I assumed they made that up because they couldn't legally put in the actual site.

Ashley:

And probably no other site wanted to give them permission.

Remi:

Sidebar, the real Lindsay Mills actually makes a brief cameo in this scene appearing as a waitress in the background just moments before Snowden meets Lindsay for the first time. And I actually remember you were in the room when I was watching this scene, Ashley, and I was just freaking out like, I can't find her anywhere. There is a million people in this restaurant. How can I be expected to spot which one is Lindsay? And you immediately said, is it that one that's literally directly behind them? And sure enough, yeah, that was who it was. It's literally the only obvious person in the background in this scene. In the film, Lindsay comes across as a bit of a shudderbug, constantly taking pictures of Snowden as they walk through the park together. We also learn that geekmate.com is her website that she built herself and is capable of running IP traces, meaning that she can see exactly when Edward visited her site, for how long, and the exact location from where he logged in. As they walk, the two pass an anti-war protest aimed at George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Even though Lindsay is a liberal Democrat and Snowden is a conservative Republican, the two still hit it off with flying colors, despite their political differences.

Ashley:

Sometimes opposites attract.

Remi:

Although Snowden is eager to return to Iraq and continue fighting in the U.S.'s lingering war on terror, Corbin O'Brien makes it crystal clear that Snowden is far more valuable as a technical asset inside intelligence and cybersecurity. We then flash forward to Geneva, Switzerland in 2007, where Snowden is working on a U.S. diplomatic mission to the United Nations, maintaining CIA security systems. After annoying one of his superiors by being a little too detail-oriented, Snowden is reassigned to the basement to do a bit of scrubbing, which is basically just mindless busywork consisting of wiping and destroying disposable optical discs. It's there that he meets Gabriel Soule, played by Ben Schnitzer, who collects some intelligence from Snowden and invites him back to his workstation to watch the NSA systems in action, even though Snowden doesn't technically have the authorization.

Snowden (clip):

What I will be providing you and the fine gentleman of the Secret Service is a list of every threat made about the president since February 3rd. And a profile of every threat maker. Prison? Which makes me feel like the witch bringing you a poison apple. Exhibit A. Oakland resident Justin Pinsky hosted on a message board. Romania has a storied history of executing their leaders, couldn't they do as a solid, and take out Bush. Oh, this looks cheesy. How is this all possible? Um keyword selectors. Attack, take out, Bush. So think of it, think of it as a Google search, except instead of searching only what people make public, we're also looking at everything they don't. So emails, chats, SMS, whatever. Yeah, but which people. The whole kingdom's not white.

Remi:

Not long after, Snowden and Lindsay attend a CIA social event, where Snowden has been told by another CIA officer played by Timothy Oliphant, and his character literally doesn't even have a name, and Snowden is told to mingle and see if anyone there might be useful. With a little help from Lindsay, Snowden casually strikes up a conversation with a Pakistani man named Marwan Al-Kermani. Later, Snowden asks Gabriel to look into Al-Kermani using intelligence databases and surveillance tools, along with the basic personal information Snowden picked up during their conversation at the party.

Snowden (clip):

It's the cleanest Pakistani I've ever seen. I mean, second-degree contacts are off the charts, but that's I mean, that's everyone in the Middle East with six-figure income. Well, it's not dirt that we need necessarily. It's it's a pressure point. Something intimate, some kind of weakness. Can we look through his family? Mm-hmm. How about his sister-in-law? What is that? Is that some video that she sent somebody? No, this is live. Out of Paris. What do you mean live? Optic nerve? It's camera mic activation. I wish we could take credit, but uh Brits wrote it. Activation? Yeah, her laptop's off. Or it was, she just forgot to close it. Of course, how would she know? This shit is so slow. The webcam light doesn't even turn on.

Ashley:

Woof, what a breach of privacy.

Remi:

Dude, this is definitely one of those scenes that makes you pause and think for a moment. Like, maybe I should make sure my laptop is closed and a piece of tape is over my desktop camera. Gabriel then shows Snowden how quickly leverage can be created, using a few keystrokes to turn someone like Al Kermani into a potential CIA informant. Snowden is told that under FISA, this kind of surveillance is considered legal without a warrant, as long as the target isn't a U.S. citizen. Let the record show FISA is a US law that allows the government to conduct secret surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, with approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And it is implied that it is extremely easy to get their approval.

Ashley:

In the book I read, which is not one of the two that were listed, I actually opted to read Permanent Record, which is Snowden's autobiography. He says that the court approves like 99% of any type of warrant or order that it receives. And this type of court only deals with matters that are coming from high-security government agencies.

Remi:

As time passes, Snowden grows increasingly paranoid and unsettled by everything that he's learned. Barack Obama is elected president, and while Lindsay is hopeful about having a Democrat in office, Snowden is deeply cynical, now firmly believing that any president, regardless of party, will keep lying to the public about national security and surveillance. Around this time, Snowden tells Lindsay that he's resigned from the CIA due to personal differences. We then jump to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo in 2009, where Snowden is now working for the NSA, conducting extensive surveillance, breaking into computer networks, collecting metadata, and expanding operations into countries like Mexico, Germany, Brazil, and Austria. Let me reiterate that. Austria.

Ashley:

Yeah, what's Vienna doing other than hosting Eurovision this year?

Remi:

Snowden is also tasked with tracking world leaders and powerful heads of industry, looking for trade leverage, sex scandals, or anything else that could potentially be used to give the US an advantage. Snowden is later reassigned to terrorist watch duty, which he initially prefers, but the moral weight of the massive metadata collection continues to weigh on him. His growing paranoia and emotional distance also begin to strain his relationship with Lindsay, eventually leading them to canceling their planned hike up Mount Fuji. We should go to Mount Fuji someday, Ashley. It is gorgeous. It's a shame they missed that hike. After a heated argument, Lindsay leaves Japan and returns to Columbia, Maryland in 2011. Three months later, Snowden follows her back and the two reconcile, moving in together and seemingly happier than ever. Lindsay also starts teaching pole dancing classes, which is interesting, but not necessarily essential to the plot overall. Seems like kind of just a pervy scene that director Oliver Stone wanted to film and insert a clip of. Snowden eventually returns to intelligence work as a contractor, this time serving as a solutions consultant. All of their job titles are so vague. As always, Snowden excels at his job and, in time, is offered a new position in Hawaii, focused on countering Chinese intelligence. Not long after, while at home cooking dinner with Lindsay, Snowden collapses and has a seizure. At the hospital, he's diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed a medication which may slow him cognitively as a result. Figuring a change in environment couldn't hurt, Snowden accepts the job in Hawaii with a little bit of encouragement from Lindsay, who is also tagging along. We then cut to Snowden's first day working at The Tunnel, a NSA operations center in Oahu, Hawaii, in 2012. After running the gauntlet of the agency's intense daily security, I mean seriously, this would be a pain in the ass to have to go through literally the highest level of airport security every single day you're going into the office. But after getting through all that, Snowden runs into his old pal Gabriel, who's been stationed there for the past three years, and casually fills Ed in on what to expect around the office, including an upcoming table tennis tournament and the delicious pizza situation awaiting him in the break room. With so many surveillance programs collecting intelligence all at once, Snowden proposes a centralized indexing system, he calls Heartbeat, designed to catalog everything and make the data searchable, which he personally volunteers to build and spearhead. While working on Heartbeat over the next few months, Snowden discovers that the NSA has actually collected roughly twice as much data on American citizens as he was led to believe. Twice as much data as they have collected from Russia, which is crazy. When Ed shares this information with his coworkers, they advise him to just keep quiet and not rock the boat. Eventually, due to the staggering amount of complex systems work he has taken on developing heartbeat, Snowden stops taking his epilepsy medication so that he can think clearer, causing more conflict between he and Lindsay.

Snowden (clip):

More so than anyone else. Did we? I feel like I'm made to do this. And if I don't do it, then I don't know anybody else that can. It's like I'm I'm on a trajectory that I can't turn back from. No, it's turned back.

Remi:

One night, while out at a party with his fellow NSA employees, Snowden suffers another seizure in front of everyone. Because he hadn't disclosed his epilepsy to his superiors, the incident raises concerns about what else Snowden may not have revealed, leading to a thorough investigation into his recent activity and background. Not long after, he is called into a tense Skype meeting with Corbin O'Brien, who confronts Ed about accessing a program he didn't have clearance for, along with inconsistencies in his most recent lie detector test. It would suck so much if a lie detector test was part of your regular job. As a result, Snowden and Lindsay are placed under heavy surveillance and their home is bugged, along with their emails, texts, and online activity all being monitored.

Ashley:

Does he know that they're bugging his house?

Remi:

He kind of just figures it out on his own after this meeting, the way that Corbin is talking to him and everything. He just knows that they are definitely spying on him now. Corbin drops some inside information about something that Lindsay posted online, indicating that they're watching them. And he does go home and covertly tell Lindsay this, like immediately, and just says, act normal and pretend like it's a normal day. But how the fuck would you be able to do that? After wrestling with his conscience for years, this latest intrusion. Into their personal lives becomes the breaking point in realizing that the truth must be revealed. On his advice, Lindsay agrees to return to Maryland while Snowden prepares to travel abroad on one last self-assigned personal mission. That night, Snowden emails Laura Poitress and Glenn Greenwald and arranges a private meeting between them somewhere in Hong Kong. Back at work, the NSA has been thrown into disarray by a technical glitch causing power outages across Syria, and the entire office is scrambling like eggs, attempting to fix the problem while dealing with the fallout. While everyone else's attention is diverted, Snowden uses Heartbeat to copy a large number of highly classified NSA files onto a small micro SD card concealed inside of a Rubik's Cube, which he then passes right through security with hidden in plain sight. Like literally, he is walking through security and he hands the security guard the Rubik's Cube to play with while he is going through all of the scanners and everything, and then he gets the Rubik's Cube back from the security guard once he has reached the other side.

Ashley:

As he was sneaking out the files on these SD cards, he did use the Rubik's Cube, not to put the SD card in, but just kind of as a way to distract the guards from looking too closely into him. And I think kind of also to ease his own anxiety a little bit.

Remi:

Yeah, it's like a magic trick. You divert someone's attention this way so they're not looking the other way. In Hong Kong, on Tuesday, June 4th, 2013, Snowden, Laura Poitress, and Glenn Greenwald are joined by Ewan McCaskill from The Guardian, played by Tom Wilkinson, who we discussed in the Exorcism of Emily Rose in a very different role. McCaskill is handed the micro SD card from Snowden, as the group discusses how to responsibly publish the surveillance revelations. The following day, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013, the first story breaks, revealing that the NSA has been collecting phone records from millions of Americans. Over the next several days, the story continues to unfold, as President Obama publicly defends the intelligence programs on national television. On Sunday, June 9, 2013, Snowden's interview is released, revealing his identity to the entire world. And since this is one of the last chances we get to check back in with Nicolas Cage's character, we cut to his reaction as he watches Snowden appearing on television.

Ashley:

This is unnecessary.

Remi:

I'm sorry, that was the only clip of Nicolas Cage in this film I could find, so I had to include it. And yes, it was completely unnecessary. But there's a lot of really unnecessary stuff in this film. Since Snowden is basically considered an international fugitive after this, a covert meeting is arranged between Snowden and one of the top lawyers in Hong Kong, with the goal of getting him out of China and under UN protection as quickly as possible. Until then, Snowden is taken to a safe house and told to kick back, chill out, and lay low for a little bit. Just shy of two weeks later, Snowden is escorted to an airport, where he boards a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, with plans to continue on to Cuba and then Ecuador to seek asylum. Those plans totally collapse when his travel details leak to the media, making international headlines before Snowden has even landed in Russia. The US responds by canceling his passport mid-journey, trapping him in Moscow during his layover. Snowden finds himself stranded in a Russian airport, unable to travel any further and unable to return home. Since Russia is Russia and they have pretty much hated America for over 70 years at this point, they refuse to cooperate with Snowden's arrest or extradition back to the US, leaving him in a state of limbo. After 39 days of living inside the airport hotel, Snowden's only remaining support comes from his Russian lawyer and a legal advisor from WikiLeaks named Sarah Harrison. Eventually, Russia grants him asylum along with a three-year residency permit. Sidebar, Edward Snowden's real-life Russian attorney, Anatoly Kucharina, makes a brief appearance in this scene playing one of the Russian diplomats who speaks with Snowden about asylum at the airport. The film ends with Snowden giving an interview over Skype from his small apartment in Russia, where he's asked whether he still believes everything he did was worth it. The scene then cuts to the real Edward Snowden who delivers his actual response in his own words.

Edward Snowden:

When I left Hawaii, I lost everything. Stable love. And I lost that life. But I've gained a new one. And I'm incredibly fortunate. And I think the greatest freedom that I've gained is the fact that I no longer have to worry about what happens tomorrow. Because I'm happy with what I've done today.

Ashley:

That is a pretty cool ending. I like how they had Edward Snowden read that script. And if you haven't seen it, the scene starts with Joseph Gordon Levitt on one side of the laptop. The camera then pans behind it, and then it's the real Edward Snowden.

Remi:

It is a neat inclusion. I always like it when they have the real people behind these stories somewhat incorporated into the cinematic adaptation. Just before the closing credits, a title card appears reading, As of this date, Edward Snowden resides in Moscow. Lindsay Mills has moved to join him. And that was Oliver Stone's Snowden. Any initial thoughts, Ashley?

Ashley:

I have a whole slew of notes written down, which we'll go into more deeper at the end after we go over the true story. But initially, I am just very surprised with the timeline of things. There's things that you talk about that happen in Hawaii when it really happened in Tokyo. There's times when he's working for the CIA when he was really working with the NSA and vice versa. Just a lot of the timeline stuff is wrong and done in wrong locations. Some of the reasonings that are given for the choices he made aren't correct, are completely inaccurate. And it just is so weird to me that it was done that way because it doesn't make the narrative tighter, in my opinion.

Remi:

This is a hard story to adapt. This is a film about hackers and people that are on computers all day. And the big climactic moment is when he hands someone a micro SD card. Like this is a difficult story to convert into the film medium. Because there's not really a lot that happens overall. Even though what happened was a very big deal, the actual events of how it occurred is not the most interesting story, in my opinion. And I really didn't like this movie. It seemed like this movie was really wanting to be the social network with its soundtrack and how it was filming certain scenes, but it just is not the social network, and I think that this movie is pretty bad, in my opinion. I do not recommend anyone check out this film.

Ashley:

From the clips you showed me, it seems like if not for Joseph Gordon Levitt, then this movie would have been a bomb.

Remi:

This movie was a slog to get through, probably because I don't know much about this sort of tech talk, so half the time I was lost about what they were talking about. And I kept having to look things up, find out what this is, find out what that is. And to add on what you said just at the beginning here about them switching the timeline around, yeah, that kept interfering with me trying to do research for this film, because the real timeline kept coming up when I was trying to research the timeline of the movie version. So I don't know, this movie is kind of a mess. It is a really historic thing that Snowden did, but the movie and the actual story itself is not really that interesting.

Ashley:

So it sounds like you would recommend people that want to learn more about Edward Snowden watch the documentary that Oliver Stone wanted to be released after.

Remi:

I have not seen it, but yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. I'm sure that is a much better version of this story, and from your reaction, probably way more accurate. But let's get into the release of this film. There was a very deliberate strategy around when and how the film was going to be released. Cannes director, Theory Frumand, claimed that he wanted Snowden at Cannes, and had already seen it, but the producers chose not to premiere it that early, opting to wait and release the film closer to award season.

Ashley:

Why? So many movies that go on to be nominated at the Oscars premiere at Cannes.

Remi:

Between you and me, I think it's because they knew the movie wasn't very good. And we will see how this film fared in award seasons in just a minute. Oliver Stone later held his own private NDA-only screening for a small invited audience at the former home of Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, with the goal of getting some early feedback without risking leaks. I don't know if Oliver Stone has ever heard of a test screening before, but that is basically exactly what this is. You sign NDAs, you watch the movie. Yeah, maybe you're not watching it at Ernest Hemingway's house, but this is pretty standard stuff, Ollie. The real Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance via Google Hangout after the film's first screening at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con.

Ashley:

Comic-Con? How did this movie make it into Comic-Con?

Remi:

Yeah, there was a period of time where any movie could go to Comic-Con and debut. This seems like such a weird choice to bring to Comic-Con.

Ashley:

If anything, it should have been at like a tech convention.

Remi:

Well, I searched all over the place to try and find a video of this Snowden appearance at Comic-Con, but I couldn't find it anywhere. If anyone knows where to find it, please email us, because I am curious. Snowden joked that no one looks forward to having a movie made about themselves, but said that he approved of the film and called it a pretty accurate portrayal. He did note, however, that one of the major departures from real life was the character of Corbin O'Brien, who was written as a composite rather than being based on a real person. Edward's parents, Lonnie and Wendy Snowden, attended the New York premiere of the film and publicly praised Joseph Gordon Levitt for his portrayal of their son, which Levitt called the most meaningful encouragement he'd ever received for a performance.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt:

And uh Ed's mom and dad came. And I I had not had a chance to meet them before. And I don't know if I've I've ever had as fulfilling an experience as an actor of feedback as that. Because, you know, as an actor, you're always sort of like, well, how was it? You want approval from your director, you want approval from your audience, you want, you know, m hopefully we'll get good reviews or we'll get good box office or whatever. But but when you play uh a real person, and then their real mother and father come up to you and and say thanks, and say, I saw my son and what you were doing, and and thank you for doing this. They thanked me and said, I know this might attract criticism. And his dad really made a point of looking me in the eye and saying thanks. And I've never, I've never experienced anything like that as as an actor, that kind of positive feedback.

Ashley:

Oh, he does seem really moved by it.

Remi:

Joseph Gordon Levitt is good in this film. He brings his A game, but the film itself lets him down, in my opinion. Levitt went on to announce that he would donate his entire acting salary from the film to support projects around technology, privacy, and democracy, including to the American Civil Liberties Union and his own collaborative platform at the time, hit Record.

Ashley:

Aw, what a guy.

Remi:

At the box office, Snowden brought in $21.6 million in the US and Canada, then another $15.7 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $37.3 million, against an estimated production budget of $40 million.

Ashley:

Not worth missing your mom's funeral, in my opinion.

Remi:

No, not at all. The film was released in the US on September 16th, 2016, just one day after Oliver Stone's 70th birthday. It was projected to make around $10 million in its opening weekend, but ended up debuting closer to $8 million, closing out in fourth place behind Sully, Blair Witch, and Bridget Jones's Baby.

Ashley:

Do you mean Bridget Jones' Diary?

Remi:

No, Bridget Jones' Baby. They made a third one. I didn't know that either. This marked the lowest opening weekend of Stone's entire career for a film that was released in more than 2,000 theaters. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 61%, based on 257 reviews, with a critical consensus that reads, Snowden boasts a thrilling fact-based tale and a solid lead performance from Joseph Gordon Levitt, even if director Oliver Stone saps the story of some of its impact by playing it safe. The film ultimately received no Academy Award nominations or Golden Globe nominations, but did, however, earn a Golden Raspberry nomination for Nicolas Cage in the worst supporting actor category. He's literally in this film for like three minutes total. But thankfully he lost out to Jesse Eisenberg for his performance as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice. A much, much, much worse performance.

Ashley:

Man, what a disappointing post-production section we got going on here.

Remi:

Yeah, this movie kind of just disappeared like a fart in the wind at the box office. And as of early 2026, when we are recording this, Oliver Stone has yet to release another narrative feature film since Snowden's disappointing underperformance. And that was Oliver Stone Snowden, a version of the story that I'm assuming lacks a bit of accuracy from your reaction, Ashley.

Ashley:

Well, let's get into that. It's time to declassify the real story of Edward Snowden. Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21st, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family ties to the Coast Guard started with his maternal grandfather, a deputy chief of the Aeronautical Engineering Subdivision. Well, there is also his father, Lon, a chief petty officer at the Aviation Technical Training Center. By the time Snowden was born, Lon worked as a curriculum designer and electronics instructor, specializing in avionics, the complex electronic systems that help aircraft operate. Growing up, Snowden spent a lot of time with his mother, Wendy, because his dad was often away. She loved giving him math challenges on shopping trips, rewarding him with little trinkets if he mentally added up the prices. As he got better, the problems got harder. She also encouraged his intellectual curiosity by regularly taking him to the library. From a young age, he learned two things. Knowledge is valuable, and if you can solve problems, you could unlock great rewards. Life changed for Snowden when his family moved to Crofton, Maryland, right before his ninth birthday. He was popular at his old school, but in Maryland, he became a target. Kids mocked him for his glasses, disinterest in sports, and his southern accent. He became so sensitive about his accent that he stopped speaking in class, causing his grades to plummet. At home, he spent hours trying to erase the accent from his voice. Kids can be dicks, man.

Remi:

They sure can.

Ashley:

Meanwhile, his parents, like most people in Crofton, got jobs working for the government. His dad became the chief warrant officer in the Aeronautical Engineering Division at Coast Guard Headquarters, and his mom took a job as a clerk for the Insurance and Benefit Association that serviced employees of the National Security Agency, the NSA. Both positions had top secret security clearances and were based out of Fort Meade, a military base home to over 100 government agencies and all five military branches. It's something crazy, like one in every four residents in Crofton work at Fort Meade.

Remi:

That seems like a security risk.

Ashley:

Well, housing that many government agencies in all five military branches, you need a lot of people.

Remi:

Yeah, that is true.

Ashley:

Soon after the move, Snowden's dad brought home something that changed everything. A Commodore 64. One of the first home computer systems on the market. I'm sure it was a box.

Remi:

I thought you were gonna say a Rubik's Cube.

Ashley:

Snowden was inseparable from that thing. By the age of 12, he spent every waking moment online, preferring to sleep during the day at school. To ensure he didn't completely fail his classes, he studied the core syllabi and figured out what assignments and activities he could ignore and still passing. By the age of 13, he started experimenting with hacking. At first, it was the kind of tricks a lot of kids try. Simple video game hacks to get extra lives or see through walls. But things got more serious when he developed an intense fear of impending nuclear war. His research led him to the website of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the country's nuclear research testing facility. And what he found shocked him. The glaring security holes. If you adjusted the website's URL in a certain way, you could access every file on the site. Not just public information, but a trove meant only for security-cleared workers. Things like confidential memos, employee information, things the public wasn't meant to see. Realizing this was a major issue, Snowden sent an email to the lab's webmaster explaining the vulnerability and waited for a response that never came. He checked the site every day after school to see if the directory structure had changed. It sounds like a lot of the stuff he found, it would have been a major issue if someone with bad intentions discovered it.

Remi:

Well, a lot of hackers are just trying to entertain themselves, but they usually do something. Snowden is actually being pretty responsible here by just trying to contact them and give them a heads up instead of messing with things.

Ashley:

Growing increasingly uneasy when the problem wasn't fixed, he called the general information line and left a message with his name and phone number. Weeks later, someone finally called him back. His mom was understandably alarmed when the caller asked to speak to her adolescent son. But the man was friendly and thanks Snowden for explaining the problem and how he'd found it. His life changed once again toward the end of his freshman year when his parents got divorced. His dad moved out, his mom put the house on the market, and he moved with her and his older sister Jessica to an apartment in Ellicott City.

Remi:

In the film, this is the reason that he drops out of high school because of the divorce and moving in with his mom and needing to help financially.

Ashley:

Well, here's the real reason why he dropped out. At the beginning of the 10th grade, he contracted mono and missed four months of class. He felt horrible, had no energy, and grew depressed, blaming himself for his parents' divorce and wondering why he was alive. After he was well enough to return to school, his teachers dropped a bombshell. He needed to repeat the 10th grade. Imagining nothing worse, he worked out a deal with administrators. He'd enroll in classes at Anne Arundel Community College two days a week until he finished his GED, which he did by the end of the year. While there, he met a 25-year-old woman who ran a successful web design business and hired him to help her with coding, which he did for the next two years. This is not Lindsay. This is an older woman that he developed a young adolescent crush on and just kind of helped her with her website. I think this is where they took the inspiration behind making it so Lindsay invented the dating site they went on, because that is not true.

Remi:

And that never comes up again, the fact that she designed a website and knows something about computers. It's just kind of brought up and then immediately dropped.

Ashley:

It's definitely from this woman. And just an add-in that doesn't really make sense. Just leave it out. Anyway, then came September 11th, 2001. The attack didn't just change the country, it changed the direction of Snowden's life. Traditionally, the NSA and CIA rigidly required at least an associate's degree to be considered for employment. But after 9-11, the agencies grew rapidly, especially on the technical side of things. They needed people, advanced systems, and new technology. The demand was so great that they began bending their own rules, and Snowden saw an opening.

Remi:

So they are like lowering the bar because they need more employees? This is top secret information here.

Ashley:

At age 20, he enlisted in the army since there was a possibility the government would waive their degree requirement for military veterans. So they are still keeping some systems in place.

Remi:

Well, that's good at least.

Ashley:

He scored high enough on the entrance exams to qualify for a special forces track and shift off to basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. But he didn't last long. Less than six months in, he suffered bilateral tibial fractures and received administrative separation, a type of discharge not considered honorable or dishonorable.

Remi:

It's basically getting discharged for medical reasons.

Ashley:

And it's only offered to people who have been in the military for less than six months. So if you're over that, you would probably, even if it's for medical reasons, get an honorable discharge because that impacts the benefits you can get later. After that, he returned to community college while he searched for jobs that would sponsor his application for the single scope background investigation. The CIA and NSA Security Clearance Program. The University of Maryland at College Park agreed to do so. At the time, they were helping the NSA open the Center for the Advanced Study of Language. Its mission was to study how people learn languages and develop computer-assisted methods to help them learn faster and better. At least that's what was written down. In the wake of 9-11, the NSA was intercepting massive amounts of foreign communications thanks to the Patriot Act, which significantly expanded U.S. government surveillance and law enforcement powers to counterterrorism, giving agencies broader tools to monitor communications, share data, and investigate financing while also increasing penalties for terror-related crime. But the NSA had a problem. Their computers were collecting massive amounts of information, not all of which they could quickly process or understand. They needed to improve the comprehension of their networks.

Remi:

They needed to organize it.

Ashley:

During this time, Snowden met and started dating 19-year-old fine art photography student Lindsay Mills, which is probably why, in that one scene of them at Hawaii, she had a camera around her neck.

Remi:

She's taking photos in a couple different scenes throughout this film.

Ashley:

By the age of 22, Snowden passed a polygraph, the final stage in obtaining NSA security clearance. His first major contracting gig was with the CIA through Bay Systems, a subdivision of British aerospace. He was hired as a system administrator whose primary duties were to keep the CIA servers running and secure and troubleshoot any problems other employees encountered. He agreed to work the night shift at CIA headquarters in Virginia, which left him with a lot of time on his hands. So he did what many people would do in that situation. He went online. But not the normal internet we all access every day. Snowden had access to the CIA's internal web. It had a social platform like Facebook where agents could interact.

Remi:

What?

Ashley:

There was an internal Wikipedia, a place that stored information about teams, projects, and missions. There was a version of Google, a search engine designed to help employees find what they needed across the classified network.

Remi:

This is all blowing my mind.

Ashley:

He had access to top secret information regarding trade talks and coups while they were still unfolding, events the public wouldn't hear about for days, weeks, or ever. After nine months as a system administrator, Snowden was itching for a change of scenery, something more glamorous. He landed a technical overseas job with the CIA, but he had one more step before he could see the intelligence world from outside the U.S. Training School. For Snowden, CIA training didn't begin in some sleek facility with polished hallways and swanky facilities. It started out of comfort inn, a makeshift dorm for the Warrington Training Center and his home for the next six months. From day one, the message was clear. What happens here stays here.

Remi:

I mean, I figured that's implied.

Ashley:

Trainees were discouraged from telling their loved ones where they were staying and what they were doing. Snowden rarely went home to Maryland and barely talked to Lindsay or his parents on the phone. At 24 years old, he entered the Basic Telecommunications Training Program, which trained technical information security officers, TISOs, the underground agents responsible for managing the technical infrastructure of CIA operations. Most are stationed overseas inside stations hidden within American consulates and embassies, and their job doesn't just involve computers. They need to be able to fix everything in the building. The cameras, CCTV, HVAC systems, generators, even electrical outlets. They not only have to know how to build and fix these systems, they have to know how to destroy them. If the embassy is under siege, their number one mission is to ensure nothing valuable can be captured by the enemy. No hard drives, no files, no nothing. Snowden's dream wasn't to work somewhere swanky like Europe or Switzerland. He wanted to be part of the Special Recruitment Division, SRD, the group that gets sent to the most dangerous parts of the world. Places even the CIA deems too harsh or hazardous for permanent postings. Remy, what do you think some of these places are?

Remi:

Probably some parts of the Middle East.

Ashley:

Largely focused on the Middle East. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, places like that. Soon on, it became clear the organization was cutting corners. The conditions of the comfort inn were poor, and trainees were expected to work unpaid overtime, denied leave, and not given the family benefits they were promised. Discontent spread quickly. His classmates nominated him as their representative and encouraged him to talk to the head of the school. They were essentially told to suck it up. Dissatisfied with this response, Snowden escalated the situation, sending his grievances up the chain of command. It only took a few days for things to change. Unpaid overtime was no longer required, and within two weeks they'd all be moved to a nicer hotel. For Snowden, it looked like evidence of something he deeply believed. If you see a flaw in the system and report it clearly enough, the system can be fixed. But a few days later, he learned another important lesson. If you work for the government, the chain of command is to be respected. Something we learned about in the film An Episode About a Few Good Men.

Remi:

There is definitely a hierarchy.

Ashley:

He was called into the head of the school's office. Waiting for him was the director of the field service group, basically Snowden's boss's boss's boss. They talked about insubordination and reminded him of the chain of command. It didn't matter that he tried proper channels first. We want you to know we can count on you, they said. You've got to understand there's a system here. Snowden wasn't punished, at least not right away. When it came time for assignments, he didn't get the job he wanted, even though he was the only person in his class to list it in their top three choices. Instead, he was assigned to Geneva, Switzerland, and told this was an opportunity, a place where his talents wouldn't be wasted. The plus side, Lindsay could join him. From 2007 to 2009, he was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Geneva as one of the rare technologists deployed under diplomatic cover. He was tasked with helping to bring the CIA's European stations online, digitizing and automating the network through which the government spied. After spending two years in Geneva, 26-year-old Snowden returned to contracting, this time through Parrot Systems, a company later acquired by Dell. The contract was based in Japan and with the NSA, the most advanced intelligence agency on the planet. He was stationed at the Pacific Technical Center on the Yakota Air Force Base, which handled NSA infrastructure for the entire Pacific region. It provided support for the agency's secondary hubs in nearby countries, with communication interception being a major part of the center's mission. As a systems analyst, Snowden's responsibilities included maintaining local NSA systems, helping connect the cyber architecture with the CIAs, and traveling to embassies to increase the agency's abilities to share intelligence. He was hired at the time leadership realized the risks they were taking by not keeping backup copies of their files, so they tasked him with engineering a solution. The result was a backup storage system designed to function like a shadow NSA. A system to ensure that even if primary sites collapsed, no data would be lost.

Remi:

It's sort of crazy that this wasn't in place until now.

Ashley:

And Snowden encountered a problem. Duplicated data. In a massive network, copying files multiple times wastes space and clogs the system. So Snowden designed a system that constantly scanned files across facilities, queued unique ones for transmission, and improved the ease of searching through them. This sounds like what he was working on in Hawaii, does it not?

Remi:

It sounds exactly like what he was working on in Hawaii. It's like a search index system for everything that organizes it, right?

Ashley:

Yeah, exactly. And this program was not called Heartbeat. There is a heartbeat that he works on in Hawaii, but it's something else. This program was called Epic Shelter, a safe place for the NSA's most valuable information.

Remi:

He did design this in the film. I did not mention this, but when he first arrives in Hawaii, they bring up Epic Shelter, and he reveals that he was the one who designed it. So it is mentioned in the film.

Ashley:

And they don't explain what it is, and instead they say it's heartbeat?

Remi:

They basically explain that it is like the precursor to heartbeat.

Ashley:

Got it. Soon after, Snowden was invited to give a presentation about prevention of Chinese cyber intelligence gathering at a conference sponsored by the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is connected to the Department of Defense and specializes on spying on foreign militaries. Wow, I can't believe I said all that.

Remi:

That's a whole lot of defense.

Ashley:

Snowden tried to read every secret report he could find about Chinese cyber activity to prepare for his talk. He wanted to do more than just report on how China could hack us and electronically track American officers and assets. He wanted to understand how to detect and prevent it. As he read deeper and deeper into the material, something hit him. There was an astonishing amount of information, too much of it. He realized there was no way America could have all of this without doing something similar to what China openly did to its own citizens. The government was monitoring communications, collecting, and now permanently storing data on a massive scale, thanks to Epic Shelter. And not just specific targets. It was happening to entire populations. For a while, Snowden tried to tell himself this was all being done for defense purposes. But then he accidentally stumbled upon something more troubling. To understand what Snowden found, we need some additional context. For the next two years, Congress passed legislation to retroactively legalize the secret intelligence activities authorized by George Bush after 9-11. Snowden tried to find a classified version of the Inspector General's report on the surveillance program, but it didn't exist. Eventually, he forgot about it and stopped looking until by accident a draft copy of the top secret document was left on a system he was working on and immediately flagged as something that needed to be scrubbed. Usually, when this happened, Snowden quickly glanced at the document to ensure he was deleting the right file. But this time he froze. It was a complete account of the NSA's most secret surveillance program. An entirely different version of the report than the unclassified version he was looking for. This report laid out the real nature and scale of the NSA's activities. It showed the agency had been ordered to intensify its intelligence gathering activities on a massive scale, shifting from targeted to bulk collection, aka mass surveillance. At the center of it all was the NSA's deepest secret, a program called Stellar Wind. It had been collecting communications since the president's surveillance program began in 2001. The government's position was the NSA could collect whatever communication records it wanted without a warrant under a few legal loopholes. Instead of searching for or collecting data, the NSA would argue it acquired or obtained it from databases it already possessed. A flimsy argument at best. The second was by focusing on metadata, data about data. There was no way the NSA could listen to every phone call or read every email, so it needed to narrow the field. By focusing on metadata, they could learn much more useful information way quicker than focusing on specific content. Take a text message, for example. The content is what the message actually says. The metadata is the sender and recipient, the time it was sent and received, how long the message is, the device used, and its location. Another example is internet browsing. The content is what you typed or read on the page. The metadata is the website you visited, when and how long you stayed on it, your IP address, location, browser, and device type. What makes this type of information gathering scary is that you don't need content to know someone's life. From metadata, you can infer so much. Who you're close to, your daily routine, where you live and work, where you travel, even what your hobbies and religious practices are.

Remi:

You could definitely get a full picture of who a person is based on their online activity.

Ashley:

And this was perfect for the NSA since the law gives substantial more protection to communications content compared to metadata. For the next several weeks, Snowden felt like a fraud, a fool, used and violated. He helped build an essential component of this mass surveillance system without fully understanding what it was for. Upon returning to Maryland in 2011, after close to four years abroad, he decided it was best to live in denial and just make money. I think a decision a lot of people would make.

Remi:

Yeah, just go on living your life and keep your head down.

Ashley:

And with ideas like Epic Shelter, he could earn a lot and maybe do some good in the process. His new position was still with Dell, but this time it was attached once again to the CIA. As a solutions consultant, his job was to help build something like Epic Shelter, but for the Central Intelligence Agency. Essentially something similar to the cloud system we all have today. The CIA wanted to make sure every agent, no matter where they were physically located, could search and access whatever data they needed whenever they needed it. Not long after the move, Snowded started having strange physical symptoms and was diagnosed with epilepsy. The rest of 2011 consisted of seizures, doctor's appointments, and medications that caused him to be lethargic and unable to focus. This was manageable for a while, given that he could work from home, but he couldn't go to meetings due to laws in Maryland and Virginia prohibiting people with epilepsy from driving. Shortly before his 29th birthday, he accepted a new NSA contract in Oahu. It was a downgrade career-wise, but his doctors thought a better climate and more relaxed lifestyle would benefit him. Plus, he would just be a short 20-minute bike ride from his workplace, the underground Kuna Regional Security Operations Center. It's actually located under a pineapple field. How lovely. As the sole employee at the Office of Information Sharing, Snowden worked as the SharePoint System Administrator, Microsoft's internal data document management system. Back to having access to unlimited classified documents, Snowden sought to confirm the suspicions he first had in Japan in 2009. He was determined to find proof that mass surveillance existed and learn how it functioned. But this task was easier said than done. Sometimes he'd see a program name with no explanation of what it did. Other times he'd find detailed descriptions of capabilities, but no indication whether they were active programs or just aspirations.

Remi:

Why is he looking for these programs? Is he already planning on leaking this information or is he just curious?

Ashley:

No, he's not planning on leaking the documents yet. He's just curious. He wants to know if what he thinks the NSA is doing is actually happening. And if so, he wants to know how.

Remi:

So he's confirming his suspicions.

Ashley:

Yes. Since the Japan conference in 2009, he'd been invited to give a handful of lectures for the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy. And this gave him the perfect cover to peruse the NSA readboards, which are daily updates of classified intelligence activities across departments. If caught looking through this, he would just say he had to stay up to date. To make things easier for himself and possibly to benefit his coworkers, he got approval to create an automated readboard. When that didn't rely on humans to post content, but curated itself. The idea was for every NSA employee to get a personalized feed tailored to their clearance level, interests, and office affiliation.

Remi:

Like a Facebook feed?

Ashley:

Very similar. Basically, an NSA employee would be able to log on to this read board and be able to quickly and easily find on their homepage the posts that are going to be specific for them rather than having to slog through all department-wide information. It would basically filter out the stuff that didn't apply to you and filter in the things that did.

Remi:

Yeah, like an algorithm when you click on one video on YouTube about phishing in Alaska and then start getting 10 million phishing videos afterwards.

Ashley:

This program was called Heartbeat. It would also store a copy of every document it sourced, making it easy for Snowden to search through all of it. This is how he accessed nearly all the documents he disclosed to journalists. One of the most famous documents he came across and later disclosed wasn't technical at all. It was a PowerPoint presentation from 2011 that summarized the NSA's position on mass surveillance in six short steps. Find a data source, identify what the data was, collect it, analyze it, use it, and share it with allies. While this document intrigued the public, it didn't explain how the system actually worked. A document Snowden found much more interesting was a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the court that oversees intelligence within the U.S. Basically, it revealed that the NSA was given legal authority to compel third parties to turn over, quote, any tangible thing, unquote, deemed relevant to foreign intelligence or terrorism investigations.

Remi:

That's pretty broad.

Ashley:

This was then used to justify collecting anything the NSA wanted from American telecom and internet companies, Verizon, ATT, Google, etc. The order also gave them vast leeway in targeting anyone deemed likely to communicate foreign intelligence information. This could be journalists, academics, political leaders, aid workers, just about anyone. This court order was being used by the NSA to justify its two most prominent surveillance methods. And a concept called upstream collection, which referred to how the NSA captured this information straight from the source without going through third-party agencies. So in the movie, this is all the stuff that his NSA friend is just showing him and telling him. In reality, he's finding this out in Hawaii. Through more digging, Snowden discovered Turmoil and Turbine, the programs that made upstream collection possible.

Remi:

The names of these programs are just so dramatic.

Ashley:

Turmoil made a copy of data as it flowed through the internet and then passed it to Turbine if flagged as suspicious. Once there, algorithms decided which malware program to deploy against you, giving the NSA the ability to freely explore the metadata and content of your life with you being none the wiser. Why does that not surprise me at all?

Remi:

It's painful how much this movie wants to be the social network.

Ashley:

The last program I'm gonna highlight is X Keyscore, but I'm gonna let Snowden explain this one himself.

Edward Snowden:

And you can type anybody's phone number in, anybody's email in, any website in, any IP address for a phone or a computer, a laptop, and you can see all the traffic uh that has passed any of these sensors. Um, you can uh write to your FBI analyst buddy and have them pull anybody in the world's uh basically a whole Facebook list uh of everything they've ever clicked on, anything that the Facebook Pixel Tracker was on the website for when they were reading things, uh their Amazon order history, you know, everything they've typed in that Google search box ever. You have access to everything, right?

Ashley:

By the end of 2012, Snowden had everything he ever wanted: love, family, success. The easiest thing would have been to sit back, say nothing, and follow the rules. But he deeply believed what the NSA was doing was wrong and that Americans needed to know about it. The straw that broke the camel's back came at the beginning of 2013 when James Clapper, the director of the NSA, testified under oath at the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

NSA congressional hearing:

So, what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all? Millions or hundreds of millions of America. No, sir. It does not. Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, uh collect, but not wittingly.

Remi:

There is a brief scene in the film that shows Snowden watching these events unfold on television.

Ashley:

So this is really the moment that he decided he's going to expose the NSA, not him getting bugged or watched or anything like that.

Remi:

Well, in the film he is perturbed about what he is hearing on screen.

Ashley:

But from how you described it, is it not when he realizes he's bugged that he's kind of like, I'm exposing all of this?

Remi:

Yes.

Ashley:

Snowden knew going through the chain of command wasn't an option. His superiors were fully aware of what the agency was doing. The easiest and most convenient way to get the truth out would have been to post the documents online himself using Tor, a server and network that anonymousizes internet traffic and is even more powerful than a VPN. It's basically like a VPN on steroids.

Remi:

It hides your location, it hides everything.

Ashley:

And it goes through three different ways of encryption versus a VPN that just goes through one. It's what the dark web uses to operate. Well, Snowden didn't do that because he was worried about two things, not being believed and people not understanding the complex technical language. He also thought the information should come from someone who could vouch for its veracity, which he obviously couldn't do publicly. Since American law made no distinction between releasing classified information to the press in public interest or selling it to the enemy nations, he needed someone he and the American people could trust. In February 2013, he settled on journalists the national security state already watched. First was Laura Potras, a documentary filmmaker who covered the 2005 Iraq election under U.S. occupation, and an NSA cryptanalysist who raised concerns about two other NSA programs. Second was Glenn Greenwald, a civil liberties lawyer turned columnist who was one of the few to write about that unclassified NSA Inspector's General report Snowden discovered back in Japan in 2009. Ewan McCaskill from The Guardian and Brett Gelman from the Washington Post joined later. Deciding to leak the truth was one thing. Now at this point, you might be asking yourself, I get that this is disturbing, but why risk everything? Why not stay silent?

Edward Snowden:

If you sit by and see a system engaged in wrongdoing and you do nothing, even if you don't participate in it any longer, even if you resign, you are perpetuating a system of wrongdoing. You have become uh not just part of the wrongdoing, but but party to it. Um and for me, uh, when we looked at this, this was affecting uh the country that I love, this was affecting uh the internet that I grew up with, which was practically part of my family uh by this point in my life. Uh and this became such a concern to me uh that I was willing to risk a great deal uh to tell people about it.

Remi:

Okay, I think that this was summarized in the scene in the film where he first notices the mass surveillance and then he calls in a bunch of his NSA buddies to tell them about what's going on, literally just because he's like, this is crazy, right, guys? Tell me this is crazy.

Ashley:

Yeah, he was deeply disturbed by this, and he was like, shouldn't everyone that knows about this be deeply disturbed? I'm not sure people will, but they have the right to know about it and make their own conclusions. Remy, what would you have done in this situation? Would you leak the information to the world or just sit back and stay quiet and do what's expected of you?

Remi:

I probably would have just kept my head down and kept my mouth shut and gone about my business. I like to think about the long-term effects of my actions. Like, if I'm gonna do this, what am I hoping to achieve from this? And it seems like his intention was to just put this information out there and let the public decide what to do with it. And this is something that, given to the American public, I don't even know what they would do with this information. I feel like most people just would go about their lives. It would be impossible to avoid texting, emails, the internet. You couldn't do that in modern-day society.

Ashley:

Well, he knew what the NSA was doing was not only immoral, it was illegal and against the Constitution. So I think his number one goal was to have Americans know that this was happening, and a secondary goal was to have it stopped. And I agree with you, I think a lot of people out there would like to think that they are like Edward Snowden and would expose this massive wrongdoing, but I would be way too scared.

Remi:

It is literally risking everything just to share and leak information. I wouldn't do that sort of thing unless I was positive a change would come of it.

Ashley:

So identifying potential allied journalists was one thing. Getting the documents out of an NSA facility was another. Snowden just couldn't put these documents onto one of the regular computers, he'd be flagged immediately. Since the NSA recently upgraded to new technology, he used one of the older desktops sitting in the corner, gathering dust. If anyone raised any questions, he would say he was doing compatibility testing, making sure Heartbeat still worked on older operating systems. Selecting the documents he wanted to share was easy, but copying them to something he could take out of the facility was a different matter. Cameras and cell phones are banned. This didn't matter much since Snowden wasn't about to stand in the middle of a top secret facility taking thousands of pictures of a screen. He decided on mini and micro SD cards. They could easily fit in his pocket and go undetected. But it took eight plus hours to duplicate, compress, encrypt, and fill one single card.

Remi:

In the movie, it's like five minutes.

Ashley:

It was painfully slow, boring, and incredibly terrifying, which is why he switched to working nights. Less people.

Remi:

Could you imagine being there for eight hours doing this highly treasonous activity, just sitting there like, I hope no one walks in on me.

Ashley:

That's how he described it in the book. That it was so boring there was nothing it could do. But if anyone walked up on him and asked him what he was doing, he'd be fucked.

Remi:

I have anxiety. I could not do this sort of shit.

Ashley:

Once he had the documents, the next problem was just as dangerous. How to reach the journalist without getting caught. He couldn't just send them from his own internet connection. That would lead straight back to him. So once again, he problem solved. Using a variety of identities, he contacted the journalist after he turned his car into a roaming Wi-Fi sensor and drove around using a laptop running Tails, an operating system that erases the memory of a computer as soon as it's shut down. He spent hours driving around, sending encrypted emails, and teaching the journalists how to decrypt them. Snowden's plan was well underway come spring 2013. Between March and May, he emptied his bank accounts, leaving most of it behind for Lindsay to find later. He tackled all the old chores he'd been putting off for months, erased and encrypted old computers, and researched countries he could safely meet the journalists. Eventually he decided on Hong Kong. Even though it was in China, it was a reasonably liberal city, a global media hub, and had a vibrant protest culture. On his second to last day in the United States, Snowden said goodbye to Lindsay as she left for a camping trip with friends. The next day, he took an emergency medical leave of absence from work, packed a bag, and left his cell phone on the counter with a note. Got called away for work. I love you.

Remi:

Wait, so Lindsay did not know that he was about to do this?

Ashley:

She had no idea.

Remi:

That is fucked up.

Ashley:

Neither did his parents.

Remi:

They mentioned that in passing in the film, but they don't depict any of it on screen. But in the film, she knew that it was about to go down, or knew at least something big was about to go down.

Ashley:

Yeah, she had no clue. Snowden landed in Hong Kong on May 20th, 2013. The journalists he contacted kept postponing, so he barricaded himself in his room at the Mira Hotel for 10 days. Finally, on June 2nd, Laura Potris, Glenn Grenwald, and Ewan McCaskill arrived. Three days later, the Guardian posted the first story, informing the world that the NSA had a court order allowing them to collect data on any and every single cell phone they wanted. The day after that, a story describing NSA's data collection from major internet services was released by The Guardian and the Washington Post. At this point, reality hit. Snowden knew once the stories were out, the hunt would begin, and it wouldn't take long before he was discovered as the source of the leak. His only chance at fighting back and having any control over what happened next was to publicly identify himself and then disappear. What's striking is he didn't have an escape plan yet. Someone else might have bought a ticket in advance, flown to a specific country, and requested asylum immediately. But Snowden was worried the government would have framed him as a foreign agent from the start. Returning to the United States wasn't an option. He'd be arrested and charged under the Espionage Act. He'd serve at least a decade in prison, the maximum penalty for leaking just one single document.

Remi:

And he leaked a whole lot more than one.

Ashley:

We'll get into numbers and estimates at the end. If charged under the Espionage Act, the law would prevent him from arguing that the disclosure served the public. He would never be allowed to bring up that the reporting later led Congress to change surveillance laws or that it helped courts strike down mass surveillance as illegal. All the government would have to prove is that he disclosed classified information, which he did. So there's no doubt he'd be convicted.

Edward Snowden:

NSA and the intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible, that it believes on the grounds of sort of a self-certification that they serve the national interest. Originally we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas. Now increasingly we see that it's happening domestically. And to do that, they uh DNSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default, it collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends.

Ashley:

Within hours, one of Glenn Greenwald's regular readers in Hong Kong put Snowden in touch with two local attorneys who volunteered to help him get to a safe place and petition for asylum. Five days later, on June 14th, he was formally charged under the Espionage Act with one count each of unauthorized communication of national defense information, willful communication of classified intelligence information to an unauthorized person, and theft of government property. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. A week after that, on his 30th birthday, the U.S. government formally requested his extradition. His legal team tried everything. Hong Kong's government wasn't willing to offer him international protection. They appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They said there was nothing they could do. Realizing his options were running out, Snowden wiped his laptops and destroyed his access to the disclosed documents, seemingly to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands or being in possession of them if caught by the United States.

Remi:

There is a brief scene depicting this in the film.

Ashley:

After reaching out to several countries, his legal team decided Ecuador was his best bet for political asylum. On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed in Moscow, Russia, on what was supposed to be a 20-hour layover.

Remi:

20-hour layover? They couldn't get him anything shorter than that?

Ashley:

So getting to Ecuador was complicated because they wanted to try to stay out of US airspace for as long as possible. And so there was just not a lot of travel options. He was immediately flagged at Customs and taken to a conference room where several men were seated around a table. On the folder in front of one was the logo of the Federal Security Service, Russia's version of the FBI. I would be shitting bricks right now.

Remi:

Yeah, like I said before, I have anxiety, and this would be giving me a full-on panic attack.

Ashley:

One of the agents tried to persuade him to disclose Intel, but Snowden refused. Then he got the news that his passport was no longer valid.

Remi:

My heart would just sink into my stomach when I heard that news.

Ashley:

Well, and at first they didn't believe the guy because they were like, he's just trying to say this to flip you, but they were able to look online and saw that it was true. And they found out that the US government canceled it once news broke that he boarded a plane. In Hong Kong, so it happened when he was midair.

Remi:

It is interesting that they didn't do that immediately and had to hear that he was trying to escape before doing that.

Ashley:

Right? I'm kind of surprised they didn't do it immediately. It sounds like they would have had a better chance of getting him extradited if he was in China than in Russia.

Remi:

Well, with how our wacky government works, I bet it just never occurred to anybody.

Ashley:

For the next 40 days, Snowden was trapped in the airport. He applied for political asylum in 27 countries, but all refused, fearing retribution from the United States.

Remi:

Completely understandable.

Ashley:

But there was one country who was willing to give it to him on August 1st, 2013. And in the movie, you had said that they offer him like temporary residency at the same time. That comes later. Right now, he's just granted temporary asylum.

Remi:

All the Russia stuff in the movie is super rushed. No pun intended.

Ashley:

After the documents leaked, the US government acted fast to try to control the narrative. They disparage Snowden by saying he was only a contractor, just a former Dell employee without real authority or a high security clearance.

Remi:

Trying to discredit him.

Ashley:

They also pointed to his job changes, which he actually didn't have that many. But they suggested that these changes reflected instability and resentment. And the reality is far more mundane. Job hopping isn't rebellion. It's the nature of contracting, which the CIA and NSA heavily rely upon. Contractors are given the security clearance necessary to do their assigned duties, just like a government employee would. The only difference is their badge color. The government also alleged he tried to persuade other employees to share their login credentials, an accusation he vehemently denies. Which I actually believe him. I don't think he'd be going around being like, hey, give me your login. At any government position, you are told never share your login information with anyone. Never leave it in a public spot. It would be so dumb to just walk around being like, hey, can I get your login?

Remi:

Yeah, and he doesn't really seem like a social butterfly that's able to just talk information out of people.

Ashley:

And what would getting others' login information achieve? He was a tech guy. He had access to everything he needed. By October 2013, the international consequences of Snowden's disclosures began to emerge. The documents revealed that the U.S. had been spying on not just adversaries, but up to 122 high-ranking foreign leaders, many from allied countries, causing increased tensions and strained relationships. Which is probably why Germany and France were like, heck yeah, we'll finance this movie. By March 2014, the Armed Services Committee accused him of leaking documents related to military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Some of the documents allegedly contained sensitive NSA blueprints detailing how the agency operated. If true, it could mean that anyone who read them could evade or possibly duplicate NSA surveillance. Glenn Greenwald came to Snowden's defense, arguing documents of this caliber were necessary to prove mass surveillance existed in the first place. Snowden responded by saying he didn't indiscriminately turn over documents. Instead, he quote, carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest, end quote. In February 2015, the NSA director acknowledged what many already suspected. The disclosures hindered their ability to detect and evaluate terrorist activity. Later that year, the New York Times reported that ISIS studied the leaked documents to gain intel on how the U.S. gathered information on militants. This resulted in the terrorist organization using couriers and encrypted channels to avoid being monitored and tracked. Matters grew worse in June when London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services decrypted more than a million of the leaked files, forcing the UK's M16 intelligence agency to move agents out of hostile countries. A huge setback for NATO allies. That same year, the fallout reached the federal court system when a Court of Appeals ruled in ACLU v. Clapper that the NSA's mass surveillance program violated even the loose standards of the Patriot Act and was probably unconstitutional. In response, Congress passed the Freedom Act, which explicitly prohibited bulk collection of Americans' phone records without a warrant. Another federal case in 2020 made a similar ruling about the constitutionality of mass surveillance. So basically, disclosing these documents did change American law and policy. Yes, the NSA still can get this information that they want, but they can't do it on a mass scale with unfettered access. They have to get a court order.

Remi:

Unless they've passed some other law that hasn't come to light yet that is a loophole in that that allows them to keep doing what they're doing. Because I'm pretty positive they are still keeping these surveillance tactics up.

Ashley:

True, yeah.

Remi:

Who knows? Call me pessimistic. I don't know.

Ashley:

Snowden began a career in public speaking in March 2014. From Moscow, he addressed students, scholars, lawmakers, and technologists about the protection of civil liberties in the digital age. He repeatedly applied for temporary asylum in Russia until he was granted permanent citizenship in October 2022. He still lives there with his wife Lindsay and their two sons. He works at an unnamed Russian IT company and can't use credit cards. I don't really know why. He has a Russian lawyer, which is the same guy you talked about in the movie portion, and several employed by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the ACLEU. In 2016, he became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting journalists from hacking and government surveillance. It focuses on preserving and strengthening First and Fourth Amendment rights through the development of encryption technologies. On September 17, 2019, the day he published his memoir, Permanent Record, the United States filed a civil suit for violation of non-disclosure agreements he signed with the CIA and NSA. A federal judge ruled in their favor and ordered him to pay $5.2 million in restitution to a trust set up by the US government. Now one of the most persistent questions surrounding Edward Snowden has never been answered. How many documents did he actually disclose? Estimates range widely. Early on, the NSA director estimated between 50,000 and 200,000 documents were shared. This later changed to 900,000 and again to 1.7 million.

Remi:

That's a pretty big discrepancy there.

Ashley:

Right? 50,000 to 1.7 million? How'd you get these numbers? But regardless of the number, Snowden's global surveillance disclosures have been honored by publications and organizations across Europe and the United States. In 2013, he was voted the Guardian's person of the year, receiving four times as many votes as any other candidate. And that is the true story of Oliver Stone's Snowden. So what did you think, Remy?

Remi:

I think that Edward Snowden's story was not meant for the cinematic medium. I think what he did is very bold and very noble. However, the actions of him doing it are not the most entertaining things to watch someone doing on screen or in real life. This guy was at the computer eight, nine, ten hours a day looking at information.

Ashley:

So I actually disagree. I think it could have been a much better, thrilling, anxiety-driven type movie if it was in someone else's hands. I think of Aaron Sorkins, The Social Network. That could have been a really, really boring movie, but somehow watching these guys develop Facebook became gripping.

Remi:

That is a very good point. I think Mark Zuckerberg and Edward Snowden have a similar social vibe based on the interviews that I've seen of the two of them. And David Fincher and Aaron Serkin did manage to make a story about depositions and people on their computer really, really intriguing. So I guess it is possible, but Oliver Stone was not the man to do that. From hearing the true account that you just went over, he changed so many needless things to the point where I think it actually made the story worse in a lot of cases. So, I don't know. I think that this is a complicated story to try and convey to the public. It's a lot of tech talk, it's a lot of things that confused me personally just because this is not my forte. However, based on what you just said, I do think that this could have been done well. It just wasn't. It's a hard story to try and translate.

Ashley:

And it's kind of with all the tech talk, kind of made for an Aaron Sorkin heavy dialogue film. And I think you could have really leaned in on how terrifying it must have been for him as he's sitting at his computer in CIA and NSA headquarters researching all this stuff, knowing that he's not supposed to be reading it, even though he technically has access to it. And especially the stuff with him just sitting at work all day copying all these files and then sneaking them out. And I think having a scene of him driving around in a little car that he turned into a Wi-Fi roaming device, like sending all these emails, bouncing off all these public Wi-Fi servers, and then having to teach the journalists how to decrypt them, that could have been a pretty funny scene.

Remi:

I totally agree. And the anxiety he would be feeling in these situations. You could have filmed this and depicted this in a really unique, intense way, but I think that the way that Oliver Stone did it was just dated and out of touch and not very well done. But this is a challenging thing to depict. So I'll give him a little slack on that.

Ashley:

Another question that was popping up in my mind, not only as we've been recording this, but as I was doing the research, is do you think he made the right decision to disclose this information? Not for him personally, but for just the greater good?

Remi:

I don't know. Despite these new laws and new regulations that you went over, I don't really think it made that big of a difference. And there's a scene in the film where he is talking about how the worst thing that could come of this is that everyone just moves on and starts living their lives. And I kind of think that is what ended up happening.

Ashley:

I think the zoom out bigger scope is that I do think it is good that someone saw something the government was doing that was unconstitutional and violating the rights of their citizens, that he did step up and disclose it. Even if it didn't have any impact, which it did, but just knowing that they were exposed, I do think it is good. And with that, let's transition into our objection of the week.

Objection of the Week:

Your Honor, I object! And why is that, Mr. Reed? Because it's devastating to my case! Overrule. Good call!

Ashley:

And as a quick reminder, our objection of the week is the most superfluous change taken from real-life events in telling the story on the silver screen.

Remi:

I like that we've adopted the word superfluous into the definition of this.

Ashley:

My objection is that Snowden's mom was not an admiral for the military, and she didn't work for the FBI. She basically handled insurance management with the NSA after they moved to Maryland.

Remi:

And in reality, according to my notes, she taught yoga and did a little bit of aerobics. So the inclusion of a pole dancing scene in a film directed by a 70-year-old man featuring Shailen Woodley is a little bit gross when you kind of think about all the stuff around it, and has nothing to do with the plot, and is not factually accurate, and added nothing to anything. So shame on you, Oliver Stone. My objection of the week goes to you adding this unnecessary pole dancing scene.

Ashley:

Well, Remy, you've finally done it. I have been the reigning queen of the objections. For the past several episodes, you win. Bravo.

Remi:

I'm back, baby. Yeah, you've kind of been kicking my ass the past few episodes, so it's nice to get a win here. Which segues us perfectly into the next portion of our show, our verdict.

Objection of the Week:

At the conclusion of each episode, our hosts will deliver a verdict based on the film's accuracy. If the film is an honest portrayal of the events, then it will earn a not guilty verdict. If the adaptation is mostly factual, but creative liberties were taken for the sake of entertainment, the film will be declared a mistrial. But if the film ultimately strays too far from the truth, then it will be condemned as guilty and sentenced to a life behind bars.

Remi:

I will kick things off this week since you started with the verdict portion. I don't think that the information was portrayed very accurately at all. I think that the fine points may be there in certain instances, but so many random details were changed. I just don't think that this film was paying a ton of attention to the details here. And made this jumble of a film that I just don't think tells the story very well or very accurately. This is a guy who is dealing with a lot internally, and that is very difficult to portray on film. So I'm giving this film a big fat guilty.

Ashley:

Wow. So Death of Dick Long gets a mistrial. Just because it involved a man having sex with a horse.

Remi:

How many stories do you know about someone dying from horse fucking?

Ashley:

The same amount of stories I know about a man who leaked NSA documents about mass surveillance. I think your hatred of this film is clouding your judgment.

Remi:

That may be true, but I still don't think that this movie did a very good job of conveying the information in a accurate way. So my verdict stands. Ashley, what is your stance on this film?

Ashley:

So the correct and logical verdict is mistrial. It is still recognizable. The main points of this story is there. What is jumbled is the timeline of things that happen.

Remi:

The timeline of everything, locations, dates, all of it is mixed up for no reason.

Ashley:

The biggest reason I'm giving this a mistrial is in the film, Snowden learns about NSA mass surveillance just through his friend in Geneva, when in reality he discovered it on his own in Tokyo and reconfirmed a lot of his suspicions and actually learned more about exactly how the NSA was doing this in Hawaii through his own curiosity. And other little things were also changed or convoluted, like saying Heartbeat was actually epic shelter. A lot of these things, it just didn't make sense why they were moved around and said to be happening in different dates. Another big qualm I have with this movie is that they made it seem that Lindsay knew something was coming when in reality she didn't. And I think that was a very, very, very dumb decision for Oliver Stone to make. It is much more dramatic to have it just play out like it did in real life, that she didn't know in a decision she had no idea that her long-term partner was making.

Remi:

I think that there was a way to do this film where it's focusing primarily on him coming across all of this stuff gradually and figuring it out himself and having to keep it all a secret. It could have been really engaging, but the way that Oliver Stone kind of dumbs it down for everyone does not come across very well. I think you could film this as a really intense internal struggle with Snowden.

Ashley:

There was a scene in the book where he talks about having to fly back to Maryland for some sort of training thing, and he ended up having dinner with his dad that night. And in the book, he describes how it's, you know, just a normal father-son dinner. And he the whole time is thinking about this is going to possibly be the last time I see my dad. And I know I can't tell him what I'm gonna do because my dad would do anything and everything in his power to stop me, even if that meant turning me into the government.

Remi:

That could have been a truly powerful scene. Joseph Gordon Levitt and an actor portraying the father, I don't know why the parents weren't included in the film, because they seem to have a pretty big effect on his life, and them out to dinner, and it's all what's not being said. You would need a really good writer and a really good director to pull this sort of thing off. But if done well, this could be a truly memorable scene.

Ashley:

And even how I mentioned what he did in March through May of 2013, emptying his bank accounts and putting the money in little areas in the house that he knew Lindsay would find later because he didn't want the government to seize his assets. Going around doing all the household chores that he had neglected. It was all stuff he was doing to make Lindsay's life easier because he knew after this bombshell dropped, her life was gonna be hell.

Remi:

That is what this movie should have been. This should have been a man who had to go out and lead a normal life while carrying all of this stuff that's eating him away inside of him.

Ashley:

And probably would have got those Oscar nominations that Oliver Stone was searching for.

Remi:

I think that Joseph Gordon Levitt would have earned a nomination for his work here. He's great in this movie. The movie and the script is what lets him down.

Ashley:

Even still, with all this being said, I'm sticking by my mistrial. Sounds like you're sticking by your guilty.

Remi:

I'm sticking by it, and that's my story.

Ashley:

Well, with that, let's put Edward Snow to bed. Remy, what do we got on the docket for next week?

Remi:

We got two films on the docket. We'll be talking about the film reality and the film Winner. One's a comedy and one is a drama.

Ashley:

And Reality Winner also worked for the NSA when she blew the whistle about Russia interference in the 2016 election.

Remi:

I had never heard of Reality Winner, and it's an extremely unique name. So when I first saw these movies, I thought one was maybe about a reality show, and the other one was about someone who won a contest.

Ashley:

You will learn in two weeks why and how that became her name. As well as so, so, so much more.

Remi:

Reality is starring Sydney Sweeney, so we will get a chance to discuss her. And the film winner is a comedy which features Zach Galifanakis in a supporting role. Very different films that we will be combining into one. So join us in two weeks where we continue to blow the whistle on whistleblowers.

Ashley:

And until then, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Also, head on over to our Instagram at criminal adaptations for photos. We also have a Twitter page, well, I guess X. Page where Remy is really going ham, showcasing his artistic creative abilities with posts, video clips, all that stuff.

Remi:

And we also want to thank you all for joining us here today. And if you have listened to any previous episodes, we thank you for listening to those. And please tell a friend because all that stuff helps out. And until our next episode, Court is adjourned.

Winner (trailer):

What is going on? To some folks, trying to understand both sides of a conflict is un American. Trust me, y'all. I'm as American as it gets. My name is Reality Winner. Yeah, it's my real name.

Snowden (clip):

The truth is, whoever the bad guys are, okay? Once you spend some time with them, learn their ways.

Winner (trailer):

Gabzadan Bazabonason. I want to help people displaced by war.

Snowden (clip):

You know what stops wars? The US Air Force.

Winner (trailer):

Sorry, dude. I'm going to AM. So I joined the Air Force. Really?

NSA congressional hearing:

It's a joke, right?

Winner (trailer):

Food camp starts the day after I graduated. And then I was off to Afghanistan. Yeah, I wish.