...and given the constraints they were operating under, maybe that much could not be revealed.
The first 20 minutes or so are of Ed, who isn't even known to the world yet, talking to a couple of journalists he has invited to his Hong Kong hotel room where he is hiding out from a system that doesn't even know he is missing yet. In a way, I'm surprised they came because about ten minutes into the conversation one says "What is your name again?", so maybe they had no idea what they were getting into, maybe at first they thought they were dealing with a crackpot, etc.
Some people have said it is boring, and I don't know why. Although you never get any real specifics about what Snowden did have on the NSA, you get an idea from him just sitting on his bed in his tee shirt talking to these journalists that he has seen stuff that has made him hyper vigilant. He puts a red hood over him when he types in a password to his laptop in case there is visual surveillance, he unplugs the phone because it contains ICs that can be used as a "hot mike", and he is highly suspicious when the fire alarms go off just as he is talking about what he knows. His fear is real.
I think this preliminary footage may have just been a way to show a human side of Ed. I mean, a lot of the documentary (on top of revealing more details of the secrets he leaked) is meant to show to the world that he's not crazy bob in his trailer in Nevada. He's a young, very smart, very articulate, very normal individual. Showing him simply struggling with his hair (something I'm sure most of us have dealt with at one point or another) demonstrates to us that he's not a mysterious conspiracy theorist to be dismissed; he's just like you and I. And the human quality makes us trust what he has to say a lot more. It's easy to ignore someone you think is crazy. It's not so easy to ignore someone in whom you see a little bit of yourself.
As for Glenn Greenwald of UK's The Guardian, he's shown as an articulate spokesman and advocate. He goes to Brazil and explains to them that all of this surveillance is just not about fighting terrorism. He brings his case home to them by saying if they were bidding on a contract in the US, then all of the details of their negotiations and plans to get that contract are now in the hands of the US government, and could be put in the hands of any American competitor.
The negatives? There is a part at the end that is not clearly explained. It is a conversation between Greenwald and Snowden about there being another contact in Germany that is ready to talk about what he knows about NSA surveillance. Some extremely unclear pictures are drawn and Snowden looks somewhat horrified saying stuff like "This is very risky. Does this guy know what he is doing, etc." He is really scared for the new contact, but it is never clear what is going on. The only other negative I have is, did the print explaining the transition between scenes HAVE to be so small? I had to pause the DVD and get up close to the screen to see what was being said.
I'd highly recommend this documentary just based on the fact that it pulls together some of the information that has now been scrubbed from public sources, shows Snowden as a human being, shows the bravery of both himself and Glenn Greenwald, and brings up that pesky question - is giving up such privacy - which as the documentary mentions is pretty much a synonym for liberty - worth it for increased security. Benjamin Franklin seemed to think that was not so. Watch it with an open mind.
