Glenn Greenwald broke the first NSA story in June 2013, publishing Edward Snowden's leaked documents through a series of Guardian articles that exposed the scale of American surveillance. VICE travels to Rio de Janeiro to sit with Greenwald at his home, three months after his partner David Miranda was detained for eleven hours at Heathrow airport under British anti-terrorism law, an incident Greenwald reads as pure intimidation aimed at anyone still reporting the story. He talks through his anger at the time, his guilt that Miranda bore the retaliation instead of him, and why he found the episode oddly clarifying: it showed governments willing to use their power nakedly. The film also covers his path from constitutional lawyer to Salon columnist to Guardian reporter, and his departure to found First Look Media with filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Underneath the interview sits Greenwald's larger argument, that privacy is not a minor convenience but a condition for independent thought, and that a watched society is a conformist one.