Edward Snowden's decision to publicly reveal his identity has placed him at the center of growing controversy about the U.S. government's intelligence-gathering activities.

But by stepping forward, Snowden, the source behind reports in the Washington Post and the Guardian about highly classified U.S. intelligence programs, has also come under fire in the media. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me," Snowden told the Guardian. "I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing." Snowden hasn't exactly gotten his wish.

While hailed as a hero in some quarters, Snowden has also been described as a coward and a traitor. Here is a thematic guide to the Snowden smear campaign.

Traitor

None other than John Boehner, the speaker of the House, took to ABC's Good Morning America to brand Snowden a traitor -- a sentiment echoed by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

Coward

Disdain for Snowden isn't limited to one side of the aisle. Here's Democratic Congresswoman and Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz calling Snowden a coward for his actions:

Narcissist

While liberals are largely lining up behind Snowden, there are notable exceptions. Here's Jeffrey Toobin, a typically stalwart liberal, describing Snowden as a "grandiose narcissist":

Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

Defector

Snowden's decision to flee to Hong Kong has elicited skepticism -- but also paranoia that he's in fact a Chinese agent. Unnamed government sources have intimated that the FBI is now investigating "to determine whether he was communicating with a foreign power," and those same sources are dropping less-than-subtle hints about Hong Kong's close ties to China. It's a theory that seems pretty ridiculous on its face -- why would a defector go public with his documents like this? -- but these are questions that don't bother political observers like Matt Mackowiack:

Not hard to imagine that Snowden has been a Chinese double agent and will soon defect.

— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) June 9, 2013

Loner

In what may go down as the greatest parody of a David Brooks column in history, David Brooks himself opined in the pages of the New York Times on Tuesday that Snowden's decision to leak NSA documents is proof positive of the breakdown of the American social fabric, declaring that "from what we know so far, Edward Snowden appears to be the ultimate unmediated man." Brooks's evidence for this? Snowden was curt to his neighbor and hasn't been a regular presence at his mother's house for many years.

Thus, Brooks concludes, "though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, he appears to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of society, the loosening of social bonds, the apparently growing share of young men in their 20s who are living technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood institutions and adult family commitments."

Snowden, Brooks argues, "betrayed his friends," "betrayed honesty and integrity," "betrayed his employers," "betrayed the cause of open government," and "betrayed the Constitution." The point? This guy isn't one of us.

Cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood

In one of the more perplexing comments about Snowden, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen decided to contend that Snowden will go down in history as a "cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood." Read the full passage and see if you can make any sense of it:

In a remarkably overwrought interview conducted by the vainglorious Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, Snowden cited not one example of the programs being abused. Greenwald wrote that Snowden "lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping" and that "he puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them." Greenwald said that "Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers." I think he'll go down as a cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.

Snowden may have expected to be called names when he stepped forward as the NSA leaker, but odds are he didn't anticipate that one.

With the economic crisis in Spain (and Europe as a whole) showing few signs of abating, it shouldn't come as a surprise that robberies are on the rise in the country. This is especially true in Spain's agricultural eastern regions, where the large-scale theft of fruit, garlic, and farm equipment is growing more frequent.

Reuters reports:

In Valencia, whose orange industry has helped Spain become Europe's biggest producer of the fruit, rural thefts rose 20 percent in the first quarter compared to the previous year, according to AVA, the local agricultural association.

AVA forecasts that the robberies could cost the region's farmers, many of whom barely cover their costs from selling oranges, 20 million euros this year, up from 15 million euros in 2012 and 2011, because of lost produce and damage.

To counter the problem, Spain's police have sent in the cavalry, dispatching two squadrons of mounted Civil Guards to the region to help run down thieves.

Though they arrived in late May, as the orange picking season ended, police say the horseback patrols have at least led to a hiatus in crimes, and are effective in startling robbers unable to hear them coming through the fruit trees....

Valencia's Civil Guard - responsible for smaller towns outside the remit of national police - said they had already made 50 arrests related to orange thefts in April, when they began a crackdown. Those charged so far are all Spaniards.

Incidents like these have been common for a few years -- 2011 saw 5,000 more agriculture-related thefts than 2010 -- with criminals operating independently or in gangs to steal produce and equipment for their resale value. More recently, the phenomenon has turned violent, with the death in April of a watchman who was shot while attempting to stop a group of suspected thieves.

The reasons for the thefts range from the obvious to the arcane. It seems hardly worth pointing out that a country with 26.8 percent unemployment will experience a rash of property crime, especially if that unemployment is coupled with cuts to social services on which unemployed people would normally depend. In addition, agriculture is a sector in which defense against theft is difficult, owing to the vast amounts of land that must be policed at all hours -- a problem just as present in California as in Spain -- leaving farmers to fend for themselves with community patrols or hired hands.

On a more local level, Spanish law provides for little more than a slap on the wrist for those convicted of petty theft, which means that robbery could remain lucrative even if you're caught in the act.

The economic crisis and the difficulty of policing vast tracts of land are problems that won't disappear any time soon, and Spain's budget troubles make additional investment in policing or surveillance technologies unlikely. Strengthening the laws for theft could offer the country some relief. But, in the meantime, orange you glad you're not a Spanish farmer?

Reports about the National Security Agency's PRISM program -- through which U.S. intelligence officials have access to the private communications of technology users -- have sparked fierce outrage in Europe, where leaders have long butted heads with U.S. security officials over where to strike the balance between safety and civil liberties.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to raise questions about the program with President Barack Obama when she meets with him next week, while other European leaders have said the news is disturbing enough to threaten pending EU-U.S. trade talks next month. Meanwhile, back in the country where the spying is actually taking place, a recent Washington Post-Pew Center poll shows that a majority of Americans "prioritize probes over privacy" -- or, put another way, that 56 percent felt the NSA's tracking of phone records was "acceptable."

Is there a yawning transatlantic divide when it comes to attitudes toward privacy? Consider some examples:

• In Europe, use of Facebook's facial-recognition software -- which can match users to their pictures -- is banned.
• Google has to alert Europeans in advance when the company is planning to send out Street View cars. (In Germany, people can also request that Google blur images of their homes -- maybe a good tip for GeoGuessr fans out there!)
• Earlier this year, a German court ruled against Google and on behalf of a German businessman who argued that the search engine's autocomplete function -- which associated him with "scientology" and "fraud" -- constituted a privacy violation.
• The EU Parliament is looking at a set of beefed-up privacy protection laws, including one that would require companies to delete all of a user's personal data upon request, and another that would require them to obtain a user's explicit permission before collecting and mining any of that data.

It's often argued that Europeans value privacy more than Americans do. And when it comes to giving companies access to personal data, Europeans -- or at least their lawmakers -- do seem more concerned than Americans.  

But in a 2004 article for the Yale Law Journal, Yale Professor James Whitman points out that there are areas of privacy that Americans tend to be more concerned about than Europeans.

"For example, continental governments assert the authority to decide what names parents will be permitted to give their children," he writes. "This is an application of state power that Americans will view with complete astonishment, as a manifest violation of proper norms of the protection of privacy and personhood.... Nor does it end there: In Germany, everybody must be formally registered with the police at all times. In both Germany and France, inspectors have the power to arrive at your door to investigate whether you have an unlicensed television."

What explains the contradiction? The two cultures view privacy in fundamentally different terms, Whitman says. He characterizes the European view of privacy as a right to dignity -- the right to control the public face you present to the world (thus, an unflattering Google autocomplete is ruled to be invasive). Americans, on the other hand, view privacy in terms of liberty -- the right to keep the state out of our lives -- hence the visceral distrust of national identity cards.

Europeans have a greater tolerance for intrusions by the state, Whitman argues -- a point that runs counter to arguments often made by Europeans themselves: that the Old World's premium on privacy stems from painful parts of its history, such as when Nazis and members of the Stasi used personal data to control the public.

But based on Whitman's characterization, one would expect the PRISM program -- in representing the state's overreach into our personal lives --  to trigger more outrage among Americans than it has so far.

On the other hand, under the NSA program it is -- in theory, at least -- non-Americans who are being watched most closely. It seems the notion of being spied on -- using data from companies Europe has long regarded with suspicion -- is enough to raise the hackles of even those willing to let government have a say in naming their babies.

Nelson Mandela is back in the news this week with the announcement that he's once again in the hospital and in fragile condition. And while the legacy of the former South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary leader is open to debate, there's no denying that he's often turned to as a source of inspiration. Apparently, that even applies to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's M23 rebel militia.

On Monday, a Twitter account that appears to be run by members of the rebel movement published a series of tweets quoting Mandela and hailing freedom and peacemaking -- not exactly what you'd expect from an armed group that has used violence to battle the Congolese government since 2012. 

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting themost nimble go out ahead, ~ Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.”?Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“As I walkd out Z door toward Zgate Zat wld lead2my freedom,I knew if I didn't leav my bitterness&hatred behind,I'd stillBin prison~ Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.” ~ Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” ~ Nelson #Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to hishead.If u talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.~Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”~Nelson Mandela

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”~ Nelson Mandela#M23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others” ~Mandela #M23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” ~ Nelson Mandela #m23

— M23 Congo RDC (@m23congordc) June 10, 2013

Not surprisingly, the rebel army's decision to invoke one of the world's greatest peacemakers has ruffled a few feathers. 

#Protip: if you carry out human rights abuses, you don't get to quote Mandela as your inspiration.

— Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) June 10, 2013

So what explains M23's love of Mandela? It's not entirely clear, but M23 members have argued that they have Madiba's principles on their side in their struggle with the Congolese government. "I appeal to our brothers, the South Africans, not to allow an individual or a group of individuals to discard the values that have built their nation and for which values Nelson Mandela sacrificed his youth," declared M23 youth leader Ali Musagara last month, in urging South Africa not to support Kinshasa.

And hey, given that M23 leaders are currently trying to hash out peace talks with the Congolese government, maybe they actually are inspired. The group has already suggested that just like Mandela, who was once labeled a terrorist, M23 may one day be known for brokering peace, not waging war. 

Chinese activist Ai Weiwei has had his share of experience with heavy-handed treatment by the government, having been detained for 81 days by China's secret police in 2011. Now the Beijing-based artist says another country reminds him of China: the United States.

In a column in the Guardian this morning, Ai harshly criticizes the U.S. government for the NSA's PRISM Internet surveillance program -- a program the Guardian has been at the forefront of reporting on over the past week.

"Privacy is a basic human right, one of the very core values," Ai writes. "There is no guarantee that China, the US or any other government will not use the information falsely or wrongly. I think especially that a nation like the US, which is technically advanced, should not take advantage of its power. It encourages other nations."

In another comparison that Americans are unlikely to appreciate, Ai adds, "In the Soviet Union before, in China today, and even in the US, officials always think what they do is necessary, and firmly believe they do what is best for the state and the people. But the lesson that people should learn from history is the need to limit state power."

Praise for Edward Snowden, the leaker behind the PRISM story who was last seen in Hong Kong, has been widespread in China.

"This is the definition of heroism," wrote one Chinese blogger. "Doing this proves he genuinely cares about this country and about his country's citizens. All countries need someone like him!"

"This young fellow truly is a human rights warrior!" declared the well-known nationalist writer Wang Xiaodong. "He has now fled to Chinese territory, and must be protected. We must withstand U.S. pressure, and make a contribution to world human rights!"

Ai doesn't mention Snowden explicitly in his column, but the Chinese dissident may very well feel the same way.

When the Washington Post and the Guardian revealed the existence of the NSA intelligence-gathering program PRISM last week, they both relied on a set of horrifically bad slides reportedly prepared by the agency and presented to a group of senior analysts. As I wrote at the time, the slides continued the U.S. government's tradition of generally awful PowerPoint slides.

But now, Emiland De Cubber, a presentation designer, has done the NSA the favor of redesigning the slides. Have a look for yourself below. I'd say it looks more than good enough for government work.

Before defending the U.S. government's surveillance apparatus -- as he did last week -- Eric Schmidt wasn't so blasé about government snooping.

In an overlooked chapter of his recently released book The New Digital Age, Google's executive chairman described the battle for Internet privacy as a "long, important struggle" and depicted the emergence of Big Data surveillance tactics as a threat to a free society.

"Governments operating surveillance platforms will surely violate restrictions placed on them (by legislation or legal ruling) eventually," he wrote in a chapter on the future of terrorism. "The potential for misuse of this power is terrifyingly high, to say nothing of the dangers introduced by human error, data-driven false positives and simple curiosity."

Sounds like a familiar problem, right?

Little did Schmidt know that two months after his book's release, an intelligence contractor named Edward Snowden would carry out the biggest leak in the history of the National Security Agency, exposing its surveillance program PRISM and the cooperation of top technology firms including Google.

Now, Schmidt maintains that the media got PRISM wrong in terms of its scale and structural makeup. "Google does not have a 'back door' for the government to access private user data,'" he tweeted Friday. And other journalists have also disputed reports by the Guardian and Washington Post that PRISM offers the NSA "direct access" to the servers of Internet companies.

But while a definitive anatomy of PRISM remains elusive, what we can gather from the contradictory reporting is that -- at a minimum -- Google closely cooperates with the NSA within legal boundaries to provide the private communications of users to the government and -- at a maximum -- does this with little resistance and on a scale many orders of magnitude larger than anyone previously understood.

In either case, the fact that Schmidt knew about how much information the government was secretly collecting about individuals makes his book seem somewhat less prophetic and somewhat more grounded in the present day. But clearly, Big Data surveillance worries him.

"Fighting for privacy is going to be a long, important struggle. We may have won some early battles, but the war is far from over," he wrote, before describing something that sounds a lot like PRISM. "Perhaps a fully integrated information system, with all manner of data inputs, software that can interpret and predict behavior, and humans at the controls, is simply too powerful for anyone to handle responsibly."

Going further, he wrote ominously about how such a surveillance apparatus could grow beyond a free society's control. "Once built, such a system will never be dismantled," he said. "Even if a dire security situation were to improve, what government would willingly give up such a powerful law-enforcement tool? And the next government in charge might not exhibit the same caution or responsibility with its information as the preceding one."

Fortunately, Big Brother tyranny is probable but not inevitable, according to Schmidt. "The only remedies for potential digital tyranny are to strengthen legal institutions and to encourage civil society to remain active and wise to potential abuses of this power." But that raises a question: Is Schmidt now on the wrong side of ensuring that civil society is "wise to potential abuses of this power"?