The trailer for the forthcoming Oliver Stone movie Snowden has been viewed over two million times less than 24 hours after it was posted on Youtube, suggesting huge interest in the story of one of America’s most polarizing heroes/traitors, ahead of the film’s release in September this year.
After the clip was posted, the real Edward Snowden, the CIA operative who smuggled vast amounts of data exposing the workings of the NSA, and is now living in Russia, tweeted: “For two minutes and thirty nine seconds, everybody at NSA just stopped working.”
Oliver Stone, the director of classic, politically-charged movies such as Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK has cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the CIA worker who in 2013 exposed the industrial levels of surveillance activities being routinely carried on by the NSA.
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The movie makes great play of Snowden’s intelligence, and the trailer shows Snowden completing a four hour ability test in just 38 minutes.
It was originally claimed that Snowden had smuggled the data out of the NSA using a flash drive, however in the trailer he is seen hiding a memory card into a Rubik’s cube which he uses to dodge security protocols when leaving his office.
Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian reporter, has previously told how Snowden arranged a secret meeting where he identified himself by carrying a Rubik's cube.
Snowden’s disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments.
Snowden was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor, in 2013 after previous employment with Dell and the CIA
On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents.
He has claimed he would return to the US if he could be guarranteed a fair trial.
