In perhaps the most mainstream defense of Edward Snowden yet, the New York Times' editorial board published an article yesterday calling on the United States to grant at least partial clemency to the former NSA contractor, who the Times identified as a "whistle-blower" who has "done his country a great service."

Glenn Greenwald, who famously worked with Edward Snowden this year to publicize the NSA's massive surveillance program, today rejected the idea that his role in the Snowden affair has gone from journalist to cheerleader, calling that criticism "ludicrous" and questioning his MSNBC interviewer's own partisanship.

Continuing his recent publicity blitz, Edward Snowden delivered Channel 4 UK's annual "Alternative Christmas Message" yesterday afternoon. As you might imagine, the video is a bleak, Orwell-referencing reminder of the NSA and GCHQ's invasive data-mining operations around the world.

Six months after exposing the NSA's secret surveillance program, Edward Snowden sat down with a Washington Post reporter, and over meals of burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastries, explained that his personal mission has already been accomplished.

The White House released a critical report on the NSA's data collection programs, suggesting increased regulation and urging President Obama to end the government's practice of logging the metadata from Americans' phone calls.

"Edward Snowden doesn't show up once in Google's list of top 2013 searches." Guess he wasn't important then. Back to your Harlem Shake videos, America.

Brazil has no official interest in granting Edward Snowden permanent asylum, despite the NSA whistleblower's open letter to the country offering to help investigate the United States' massive data-mining program.

On Monday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden penned an open letter to Brazil, praising the country for its strong response to the NSA's widespread data collection and offering to help investigate such programs if Brazil grants him permanent political asylum. Snowden is currently living in Russia on a one-year asylum.

The Guardian has voted Edward Snowden its person of the year, beating out Pope Francis. Meanwhile, Snowden's ex-colleagues have the sads a lot more these days. But one look at your email will probably cheer them up.

Ostensibly concerned that terrorists would disguise themselves as gamers in order to secretly communicate, agents from the NSA, CIA, Pentagon and Britain's GCHQ have posed undercover in online realms like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Xbox Live. In fact, the practice grew so popular with the spy agencies that a special "deconfliction" group was established to prevent the agents from inadvertently spying on or trying to recruit each other.

Now that NSA are the dirtiest three letters in Washington, it appears to be a much less fun place to work than before Edward Snowden detailed exactly the extent to which our communication devices are the agency's playground. According to a new report in the Washington Post, morale is down at the NSA, and its employees are angry at President Obama for not providing a pick-me-up.

The bosses at ABC have struck Edward Snowden from the top of the list of people worthy of mention on the special "Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of the Year." He'll have to settle for runner-up.

Every day, the NSA collects almost five billion records tracing the movements of hundreds of millions of cell phones from around the world, according to report in the Washington Post based on an Edward Snowden-provided classified document.

On Tuesday, Scotland Yard's head of counter-terrorism told Parliament that the news staff of the Guardian could be investigated on terrorism charges for publishing several articles based on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The NSA has been monitoring the online sexual activity of Muslims as part of a plan to discredit "radicalizers," according to a report in the Huffington Post based on a classified document provided by Edward Snowden.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander offered to resign after Edward Snowden identified himself as the source of leaked classified documents.

According to Reuters, Edward Snowden persuaded his colleagues at the NSA regional operations in Hawaii to give him their log-in credentials, which he then used to access some of the classified material he would later leak to journalists.

The saga of the globetrotting NSA leaker continues. Despite being the most famous data leaker in the entire world right now, American fugitive Edward Snowden has been hired to help maintain a Russian web company. We suppose everyone deserves a second chance.

Amid a growing controversy surrounding reports that the U.S. monitored the personal phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama may order the NSA to end its spying program that targets allied heads of state, though no final decision has been made.

Another day, another revelation that the U.S. undertook a massive spying operation against one of its allies. According to a report in Spanish paper El Mundo, the NSA monitored more than 60 million phone calls in Spain over a 30-day period last year.