Journalists are generally human disasters: stimulant-addled, barely-functional hoarders unable to focus on anything other than scrabbling after the next story with an addict's claw-handed fury. I type this encased in the stale, coffee-stained shirt that proves it. Journalists, in other words, are the people least likely to spend time setting up arcane email encryption technology that could very well prove of no use to them. And yet they are among the people who could benefit the most.

"Gamification" is an increasingly popular con to trick people into doing horrible things by pretending they are fun games. From dieting apps that bestow badges on users for eating broccoli, to a "virtual incarceration system" that gives prisoners points for adhering to their house arrest, nothing is so unpleasant that bureaucrats and Silicon Valley thinktrepreneuers have been unable to gamify it. Unsurprisingly, the NSA is a big fan of gamification, expertly exploiting humanity's universal love of accumulating points and meaningless trophies in its quest to preserve the world's Facebook status updates and Google searches for future generations of spies.

After over three months, Edward Snowden will finally be able to see someone from his family again. On Sunday, Lon Snowden, Edward's father, told ABC's This Week that he has received a visa to travel to Russia to visit his son. The trip will reportedly take place “very soon.”

Another encrypted email service has decided to shut itself down rather than hand user information over to the U.S. government. Writes Silent Circle founder Phil Zimmerman, "We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now."

In a lengthy press conference this afternoon, President Obama touched on everything from Russia's codified homophobia to Edward Snowden to Al-Qaeda. The strangest moment, however, came when Obama started in on a metaphor about his wife not trusting that he did the dishes, and how that is kind of like Americans not trusting their government's surveillance programs. Maybe he just needs to show everyone the dishes, you know? See how that works? No? Well, he tried.

Lavabit, an extra-secure email service reportedly used by Edward Snowden, has suspended operations today via an accusatory memo on its homepage: "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."

Emailing your auntie in Pakistan, or your old roommate in France? The NSA's computers already know.

Today the Daily Beast reported that an intercepted conference call between “more than 20 al Qaeda operatives” led nearly two dozen U.S. embassies scattered across Southwest Asia and North Africa to shut down over the weekend, a precautionary measure that American officials later extended through August 10. Based on testimony from three unnamed U.S. officials, reporters Eli Lake and Josh Rogin say al Qaeda lieutenants in Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Islamic Maghreb discussed vague plans of attack with al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and the terrorist group’s Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi. One of the unnamed officers compared the call to a meeting of the “Legion of Doom.”

NSA whistleblower and future Aeroflot Gold Member Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum yesterday by Russia, which allowed him to leave Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where he'd been trapped since June 23rd. Here's what LifeNews calls the first photo of Snowden in Russia, beaming as he heads to a taxi to escape the airport, flanked by Wikileaks representative Sarah Harrison and his Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena. If you'd eaten airport food for weeks on end, you'd probably be pretty excited to get out of there, too.

U.S. attorney general Eric Holder has promised Russia that the U.S. will not seek the death penalty for NSA leaker Edward Snowden. So, uh, send him on over.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Sunday, Glenn Greenwald said NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has “blueprints” that explain how the NSA operates. Greenwald described the documents as "basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built,” and said they are detailed enough to allow readers to evade or possibly duplicate NSA surveillance techniques.

It's Snowden day at Sheremetyevo! The NSA leaker will meet with human rights groups in the Moscow airport today at 5:00 p.m. (Moscow time). Snowden claims that the U.S. government is attempting to deny his right to seek asylum and violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's not just the U.S.: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American countries are subject to the NSA's wide-ranging data-mining operations, Brazil's O Globo reported yesterday, citing leaked documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden, the ex-contractor who leaked NSA documents to the Guardian and Washington Post, has accepted Venezuela's offer of asylum, AFP reports. Update: Or maybe not! The tweet cited by AFP has been deleted.

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who gave the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, was the most famous government leaker before Edward Snowden. Today, Ellsberg says that Snowden was right to flee America. No shit!

Bolivia, probably still pissed off over that whole plane incident, is threatening to shutter the US Embassy. The Latin American country is also casually flirting with America's ex, offering Edward Snowden asylum, if he wants it or whatever.

Edward Snowden, presumably still stuck in Russia's transit zone, or maybe on the Bolivian president's plane, or maybe he never really existed at all, has apparently applied for asylum in six additional countries. Wikileaks made the announcement, but will not identify the countries due to "attempted US interference."

On Wednesday, Bolivian President Evo Morales was geopolitically stopped-and-frisked in Austria on his way home from Moscow, which Bolivia has claimed was because the U.S. believed Ed Snowden was aboard his plane. Conflicting information has since emerged, with some claiming it was a routine stop that got blown out of proportion, others a flagrant abuse by U.S. imperialists. Today, however, it is clear that someone was telling Europeans governments that Edward Snowden was aboard Morales' flight, and it looks likely it was the U.S.