The Google employee who helped Edward Snowden in Hong Kong

Ten years on, William Fitzgerald, then a 27-year-old policy worker, tells of his part in the story and explores how tech has changed since

Early on the morning of 10 June 2013, Hong Kong time, the journalist Glenn Greenwald and film-maker Laura Poitras published on the Guardian site a video revealing the identity of the NSA whistleblower behind one of the most damning leaks in modern history. It began: “My name is Ed Snowden.”

William Fitzgerald, then a 27-year-old policy employee at Google, knew he wanted to help. But he didn’t yet know how.