Edward Snowden Is Runner-Up for TIME's Person of the Year

Edward Snowden came in second place for TIME's Person of the Year, losing the top spot to Pope Francis, editors announced Wednesday morning.

The first revelations of the far-reaching NSA surveillance programs surfaced in a Guardian feature in June. We learned that Verizon had given the U.S. government all its customers' phone records for yearsThe Guardian's Glenn Greenwald also revealed that tech companies we trust with our most intimate secrets had been part of a surveillance program called PRISM

When we started to digest the news, one question came to our minds: Who's leaking these incendiary documents to the press? Read more...