Glenn Greenwald was contacted by a man calling himself Cincinnatus in late 2012 asking him to use encrypted email so they could speak freely. Greenwald, involved in other stories at the time, brushed the man off. Then, in April of 2013, Greenwald met with friend and documentarian Laura Poitras. Poitras showed Greenwald a document sent to her by an anonymous source that claimed the NSA was spying on the American people. Greenwald quickly got in touch with the source and learned that he had many more documents that showed the NSA had developed a system by which they could spy on electronic communications throughout the world.

Greenwald got his paper, the Guardian, on board with the story and flew to Hong Kong to meet with the source. The source, Edward Snowden, spoke openly with Greenwald and reviewed with him the multitude of documents he had obtained through his job as an analyst with the NSA. After some discussion about the legality of publishing the stories, Greenwald wrote multiple articles that were published in the Guardian. The news took the world by storm.

Greenwald describes the extent of the NSA’s surveillance as proven not only through Snowden’s documents, but also through separate investigation and previous examples of surveillance in American history. Greenwald also makes an argument against surveillance to counter arguments made by many who suggested that the NSA should have the right to collect metadata against citizens all over the world.

Greenwald returned to Rio shortly after the publications began. He learned that his partner, David, had a computer stolen from his home after having a conversation with Greenwald over Skype. Later, Greenwald heard that one of the lawyers at the Guardian had overheard a group of intelligence agents discussing how Greenwald and Snowden should be murdered. The London offices of the Guardian were raided by the British spy group, GCHQ, and their archives destroyed. Finally, David, was detained as a terrorist in London while attempting to catch a connecting flight to Berlin.