Edward Snowden joined Twitter on Tuesday and immediately amassed tens of thousands of followers, so far with just one tweet announcing his arrival on the social media platform, and another responding to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. <\/p>\n
Tyson encouraged Snowden to start a Twitter account in part two of a long interview on Tysons Star Talk program that came out Friday, in which the two discussed data collection, privacy, the internet, and U.S. agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). <\/p>\n
You kind of need a Twitter handle. So like @Snowden, maybe? Is this something you might do? Tyson asked. <\/p>\n
You and I will be Twitter buddies, Snowden told him. Your followers will be: the Internet, me, and the NSA. <\/p>\n
The Twitter account lists Snowden as the director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that promotes transparency and exposure of government mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking. This represents a new public role for Snowden, who stayed largely quiet in the months after the NSA leaks, and has been giving intermittent interviews since. The fact that the only account Snowden follows is the NSA, and that his background image is a collection of newspaper headlines about bulk phone data collection being ruled illegal, shows this may be a combative side of Snowden the public has not seen much of. <\/p>\n
Snowden became famous over two years ago when he left his job contracting for the NSA and took a large number of top secret documents with him, which he provided to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Greenwald, Poitras, and others extensively reported from the documents, revealing an unprecedented network of electronic surveillance that shocked the nation and the world. <\/p>\n
Snowdens revelations included the mass collection of metadata from phone calls, government backdoors installed in software by some of Silicon Valleys biggest companies, and mass recording of phone calls made to foreign countries. His leaks resulted in a wave of anger against government spying around the world, as well as the USA Freedom Act, intended to reform the NSA. <\/p>\n
The leaks accomplished this all without causing any documented harm to Americans in the military or intelligence. Snowden even says he tried to raise concerns with the NSA before resorting to whistleblowing. But several Republicans and Democrats clamored from the beginning for Snowden to be tried for treason, which would potentially result in his execution if found guilty. <\/p>\n
Snowden currently has asylum in Russia. He intended to fly to Latin America before the U.S. revoked his passport and stranded him, charging him with three felonies, two of which are under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law used to prosecute pacifists for publishing newspapers and giving speeches. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n