Edward Snowden Opens Twitter Account, Follows Only the NSA

It sounds like a Late Show joke, but it’s not: Edward Snowden joined Twitter yesterday and his first follow was the NSA.

At a pace faster than Caitlyn Jenner’s Twitter debut, Snowden’s account has over a million followers. One has to wonder what took him so long to come around to the social media site. Even Twitter got excited and published at heat map of who and where people were tweeting about @Snowden.

Today @Snowden joined Twitter, and here’s the world’s response. pic.twitter.com/d6HgVvdRsf

— Twitter (@twitter) September 29, 2015

His timing coincides with a yet-to-be-announced collaboration with the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He’s also been busy leaking more stories about NSA surveillance to The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald.

As Snowden’s public profile continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how governments navigate their criticisms of him. His NSA follow is an obvious political statement about the irony of the Internet as both a medium for worldwide social exchanges as well as massive surveillance.

So far, the NSA isn’t following him back.