It was very empowering to know that ordinary people could actually take action.

Before Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, there was The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. In the frenzy of the controversy surrounding the War in Vietnam, eight citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania searching for potentially incriminating files. What they uncovered was a highly classified surveillance program. Their discovery would forever change the methods of government surveillance in the US.

1971 Director Johanna Hamilton deftly blends archival footage and current interviews with the eight activists as they discuss their initial suspicions and their plan of action to expose their findings.