Goofs

While Snowden copied the secret data from NSA computer to his memory card, the copying dialog windows change from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 in seconds and change again to Windows 7.

At the beginning, inside the hotel room in Hong Kong. Before Snowden puts the two cellphones belonging to his guests in the microwave, there are already two different cellphones lying in there. After the point of view switches to the microwave's turntable, the two original cellphones have magically disappeared.

When Snowden leaves with the evidence in his Rubik's cube, he tells Gabriel he is not feeling well and is going home early. He might also not come in the next day, implying it's a work day. When he leaves the facility, the guard wishes him a nice weekend.

When Corbin teaches, the light of the projector projects graphics on his face, but in several close-ups of him the projection disappears.

When Snowden leaves his hotel room for the last time a cellphone can be seen inside the microwave oven.

While on their first date, Lindsay accuses Snowden of lying about working with the Department of State due to his IP address being from Virginia. The Department of State has field offices all over the world, including Virginia.

At the checkpoint at "the Hill", a sniff dog suddenly jumps on Snowden's car window and barks, a "startling" cliché taken from numerous "nazi movies". Sniff dogs are selected and trained to have minimal or no contact with people around them. Even looking at people is discouraged in a dog in order to avoid both distraction (for the dog it is a game) and scaring people (if larger dogs like Rottweilers are used).

When Snowden copies the files to the memory card he first selects and copies one folder, and a pop up box appears showing progress as you would expect. He then selects all the other folders and drags them to the memory card causing a myriad of copying in progress boxes to appear. While no doubt intended to increase the dramatic tension, selecting and copying multiple folders in this way would only generate one progress box for the entire operation, the only way the multiple boxes would be seen was if each folder was copied as a separate drag and drop operation, not as he did in the scene as a multiple drag and drop. The number of copy in progress boxes also appears to be significantly more than the 13 folders that he has chosen to copy even if they were done individually..

During the flashback Basic Training scene at Ft Benning, Snowden, along with the other soldiers, repeatedly call their Drill Sgt "SIR". Drill Sgt is an NCO, and therefore NOT a sir. While many new recruits make this mistake once, this fact is drilled into your brain within minutes of arriving, and then repeated over and over to new recruits. The Drill Sgt took no notice of it, an obvious error by someone who has never served in the military.

Snowden asks Hank Forrester in their first meeting "Is that a Cray-1?" which Hank acknowledges. The computer that Snowden points to is in fact (part of) a Cray-2.

A long-time Hawaii-based NSA employee advises Snowden in Oahu's Tunnel complex toward the end of his career when epilepsy was becoming problematic to take time off to travel back "the States" to visit his doctor. Hawaii is a state. Even tourists in Hawaii know that the continental US is referred to as "the Mainland."

However, military contractors are often overseas for much of their careers, and have a habit of referring to the US as "the States". Since both these characters have been contractors for years, they both would most likely have become adjusted to saying this, and not "the mainland", which is mainly a local Hawaiian saying.

As Edward and Lindsay walk through the protesters, a woman with a stroller can be seen on Lindsay's side of the screen. In the next shot, the exact same woman is now on Edward's side of the screen, stroller and all. In addition, the "baby" in the stroller is very clearly just a doll.

The Pheasant that was presented by the retriever and then handed off by Corbin was stiff and an obvious prop rather than limp like a freshly killed bird.

While in Japan and Hawaii, many of the women in the military are seen wearing their hair in pony tails. This is not an authorized hairstyle for military women to have while in uniform.

When being interviewed for his job at the CIA, the interviewer says Snowden was one question off of a perfect score on the ASVAB, individually reading each letter. It's almost universally called the "as-vab," never as A-S-V-A-B.

While Janine is video chatting with Greenwald and the others in the hotel room, the video feed Janine sees from their webcam has depth of field with the 2 sitting behind Greenwald out of focus, so it wasn't shot from a webcam. They probably just took the same shot of them in the hotel room and pasted it inside Janine's computer screen.

When watching a video on his laptop in Maryland (during a flashback ~1 hour in) Snowden is using Windows Media Player but the program doesn't appear on the taskbar, instead the taskbar shows that Firefox Browser is open and active.

When in Hawaii where Snowden and Lindsay are talking at the picnic table, there is a cloth on the table in shots looking at Lindsay with the table top in view, but when it's Snowden or both of them from a longer shot, the table has no cloth and is just painted blue.

Snowden uses a Rubik's cube to smuggle a microSD card out of a secure NSA facility. The cube he uses is a newer Rubik's tiled speed-cube, as evidenced by the small slots on the center caps. Snowden was employed by the NSA in 2013 and went to journalists in 2013; the model of cube he uses was not introduced until 2014.

In the scene where Snowden goes on his first date with Lindsay, as they walk through the protesters in front of the White House, you can see two red bikes in the background that are part of the Capital Bikeshare. Capital Bikeshare did not begin service until 2010. However, the date takes place around the time Snowden started with the CIA in 2006.

Lindsay carries a red shopping bag from Swiss discounter "Denner" when she enters the apartment while Edward watches the 2008 presidential election. The original "Denner" logo at that time had a circle around the word mark. The logo featured on the bag was first introduced in this form in 2014.

After Ed shoots the pheasant and is talking with Corbin you can see a reflection of monitors/lighting in his glasses.

When NSA held meeting with Japanese Agencies to spy on Japanese people, the big map on the wall shown Indonesian archipelago. It should show Japanese because they are in Japan.

The short video clip with the cows illustrating Austria is actually from Seiser Alm, South Tyrol, Italy. The mountains in the background are characteristic.

After showing the Geneva landscape with the water-jet, then all the part on the street has nothing to do with Geneva but from another EU country (probably Italy, France or an Eastern EU country). Very strange to indicate Geneva and then showcase another inner city. Indeed, you'll see Snowden on the scooter:

• crossing a bridge that does not look like any bridge in Geneva;
• none of main street for cars are paved in Geneva;
• none of the advertisement in Geneva are made in tubular display panel (the one you see written Elizabeth ad).

Despite being portrayed as an extremely skilled hacker, Snowden uses drag-and-drop to copy the files to his microSD card in the Hawaii NSA base, exposing himself to being found due to the tens of file copy dialogs that pop up on the screen. Any sort of power user, let alone a hacker, would have used the command line, and would have minimized the window so it wouldn't stay visible on the screen.