What's a "limited hangout"?

I thought the way it happened with Snowden is he ran to the Guardian with some harddrive of data. And as it was about the US spying on the UK, the Guardian was happy to print. Plus it's one of those things that the people up top find easier to change the culture around than cover up completely I think. Everybody always vaguely knew the US spies on everybody, but soon after Snowden it flipped from "if you think they're spying on you, you're nuts" to "well obviously they're spying on you lmao, if you think that isn't normal and natural you're nuts." Which tbh neatly neutralises everything Snowden revealed.

But I really don't know much about it! I was just reading a book about the Panama Papers (which I know is legit because it revealed massive corruption around the world and none of my IRL vaguely-political friends remember anything about it - def hushed up lol) and they mentioned Snowden as a previous leak, so I got curious about looking him up. Also I've heard the autobiography is pretty interesting in general, like as a book.