Edward Snowden rocked the world when he exposed the inner workings of the United States NSA and Britain’s GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and demanded that the people of the world be given a voice in the global dialogue about invasion of privacy.

Snowden the docu-thriller, opened Wednesday, September 14 as a live Fathom Event and Friday, September 16 as a theatrical event in movie theaters nationwide.

In a novel approach, director Oliver Stone’s movie covers two story arcs. The first story is about the relationship of Edward Snowden and his girlfriend Lindsay Mills. The second is about the unfolding of events as he fileted open governments, telephone companies and Internet providers (See Below).  Literally, the movie takes a moment in time of utter outrage, shock and awe planet-wide and reduces it to the story of responsible work ethics, responsible journalism and pure responsibility to the human species.

The story playfully begins with Edward meeting Lindsay at a Washington D.C. coffee house on a date they set up through the Internet.  They wander through the parade grounds of the capitol’s mall discussing family and government jobs, while Lindsay snaps photos of a carefree and spunky Edward.  Then the movie jumps ahead almost a decade to an agitated geek, painfully shy of phones, meeting international  journalists Laura Poitras (docu-filmmaker), Glenn Greenwald (Guardian columnist) and Ewen MacAskill (Guardian reporter).

The movie then takes a very focused journey back and fourth across the timelines, from 2004 to 2013. Sometimes it highlights the spy career story against the human drama of a man trying to protect his live-in girlfriend.

Because the movie captures exposure of a major government surveillance and requests a democratic conversation it is nothing less than a coup d’état and deserves your immediate attention.

As students that live and work in the heart of the Silicon Valley you will never be more responsible for protecting your potential employers as well as your own privacy.

Using the Imdb.com scale, this movie rates a 10.

Prior to Snowden’s Exposure in June of 2013, willfull provider of information to the NSA are:

Telephone Provider: Verizon

Internet Providers: MS Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, Apple, Facebook, Google, Skype and PayTalk.