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Edward Snowden Finally Joins Twitter – With A Few Tweets Amasses More Than 600K Followers

By Alap Naik Desai
Published on: 09:45 PST, Sep 29, 2015

Edward Snowden is finally on Twitter. With a few simple tweets, the key exposer of government spying has rapidly crossed 600,000 followers.

One of the biggest whistleblowers in the history of modern day government-sponsored surveillance, Edward Snowden finally decided to join micro-blogging social media platform Twitter. Within just a few hours, his twitter account @Snowden, was a few thousand followers shy of the 600,000 mark. As of writing, his Twitter page showed just seven tweets and 541K followers, which needless to add, says a lot about the person’s impact.

According to Edward Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, the man is personally managing the account, which means all the tweets that appear have been written by Snowden himself. No wonder, the tweet count hasn’t crossed-over to multiple digits in the past few hours he has joined Twitter.

Just Seven Tweets But More Than 500K Followers
Just Seven Tweets But More Than 500K Followers

His first tweet was quite brief. Edward Snowden decided to confirm if the world was able to “hear” him, indicating the struggle internet users have gone through to be updated about him. He might have referenced to on an old Verizon Wireless advertising campaign, reported RT.

Famed astrophysicist and host Neil deGrasse Tyson was the first to jump to the gun and welcome Snowden:

The two then had an interesting conversation about the latest announcement by NASA about the Red Planet:

Thereafter things got a bit intense between the two as Tyson referred to Snowden’s multiple personas and how the world perceived the man through many prejudices.

After the matter-of-fact answer offered by Snowden, the two discussed on the topic that may be secretly driving the internet: cats.

As the two were conversing, the news about Snowden joining Twitter spread like wildfire and his follower-count kept jumping exponentially. Ironically though, the man whose name has become synonymous with whistleblowing across the world and made Snowden a household name, is currently following just one twitter handle.

Snowden has chosen to follow just the National Surveillance Agency or NSA. Needless to say, the two pretty much only have bad history. Moscow-based whistleblower Edward Snowden is one of the most wanted men by the American government for exposing the massive state-sponsored surveillance operations, the likes of which were seen only in sci-fi movies.

Edward Snowden exposed how the governments were able to access almost any data that was perceived to be stored safe behind walls of encryption. He proved the existence of programs that could easily bypass security protocols and hack into any server with utmost ease. The most worrying aspect was that the spying programs were not just aimed at potential terrorists, but could be targeted towards ordinary citizens if the government so desired.

Edward Snowden Temporarily Lives In Russia
Edward Snowden Temporarily Lives In Russia

Snowden is currently living or rather holed-up in Russia, since he is a wanted man in America. After exposing national secrets of espionage Snowden kept moving, while trying to avoid the long arm of the American government. He was extended a hand-of-friendship by Russia.

Russia has granted him temporary asylum. Snowden’s Russian residency expires in two years, following which he might seek refuge in some other country. Despite facing severe restrictions on his movement, Edward Snowden continues to remain a strong crusader of his beliefs. He routinely travels wherever he can as an event speaker and also works as the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, reported MSN.

Edward Snowden has confirmed that he will come back to America, but only if he is accorded a fair trial. Do you think Uncle Sam will welcome Snowden?

[Image Credit | Tobias Schwarz, Barton Gellman / Getty Images, Twitter]

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