Edward Snowden was your everyday contracted NSA security analyst. Well, sort of. Working for the NSA, he saw and participated in the most massive data mining expeditions on Americans ever undertaken. He saw what he considered to be unconstitutional invasions of privacy by the NSA and proceeded to do something about it This Oscar-winning documentary film by Laura Poitras follows her receipt of communications from someone who said he had materials that showed massive surveillance on all citizens, surveillance that the government had vehemently denied. Especially significant in this is the metadata that reflects the web of interaction among citizens, a Kafkaesque “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with McCarthyite implications Several months later, she and Guardian newspaper reporter Glenn Greenwald met Snowden in Hong Kong, and he gave them documents detailing this and other digital and telephonic surveillance of Americans and US allies abroad. Within days, these were public and the world knew what had transpired. Snowden emerges as an almost preternaturally rational, calm, and thoughtful young (29) man of immense personal courage and high morals “Nerves of steel” barely describes him as well as Greenwald and Poitras. . Greenwald and Poitras’s visions are considerably more complex and directed far beyond this particular question. Still, the calm approach of all the principals makes this a remarkable and excruciating viewing experience, given that we are still there, and it makes you utterly distrustful of the commercial media. There is nothing online or over the phone that is not seen or heard. Be afraid, be very afraid. Note: Does the horror of the attack in Paris change this?. I think not. Vigilant concern for domestic security does not and should not become justification for blanket surveillance into everyone’s life. It will, I suspect, be used to defend such incursions