Edward Snowden joins Twitter, follows NSA

Snowden, a hero to a few, a traitor to others, was hired by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in 2013.

Snowden was the subject of Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour”.

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is overseeing a film due out next year about Snowden’s ordeal, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the former government contractor. Rather hilariously, Snowden is following just one other account-the National Security Agency.

He attracted more than 171,000 followers in about an hour and had 740,000 by Tuesday evening.

Snowden’s second and third-ever tweets, both public replies to Tyson, show that the astrophysicist wasn’t kidding about the Twitter buddy thing.

Snowden said he was staying busy with “secret” projects for the Freedom of the Press Foundation but added that he “still finds time for cat pictures”.

Then, he wondered what a sight of panic Fort Meade, the USA army base in Maryland that is the home of the NSA, would be. “Your users will certainly be: the Internet, me, and to discover the NSA”.

Snowden came into the global spotlight when he exposed thousands of pages of classified NSA documents to journalists and media outlets.

“How do you limit the damage?” So it’s probably safe to assume that if you’re on the site, your security isn’t being compromised – at least not by Twitter. “I’ve made a lot of strides in that and am looking forward to, hopefully, participating (on social networks) in a more open and active manner in the near future”. ” Edward had an interesting Tweet exchange with Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) about being a geek and a patriot while also being labelled a traitor by a few”.

– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015.@neiltyson Thanks for the welcome.

But don’t be too upset if he doesn’t follow you back. “Asking for a friend”, he joked.