Edward Snowden has had a bit of a slip up, and it involves the internet: the NSA whistleblower forgot to turn off his notifications when joining Twitter and fell victim to 47GB of notifications. #lessonlearned, he calls it.
The genius former NSA contractor, who spends his time dodging US prosecutors in Moscow, recently tweeted the following:
Amusingly enough, Snowden’s mistake is no more than three days old. Currently, @Snowden has more than 1.23 million followers (which he racked up in under 24 hours), and his first tweet alone secured 120,000 retweets and 110,000 likes – something few mortals can achieve in such a short while.
With this Twitter account, it is understood that the whistleblower wishes to establish an even stronger online presence that aims to promote privacy rights and fight the establishment – a fight he started in June 2013.
Asked only days before if he ever considered an account of his own, Snowden told famed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in an interview: “It sounds good, I think we’ve got to make it happen.”
“You and I will be Twitter buddies,” he joked to deGrasse Tyson. “Your followers will be: the internet, me, and the NSA.”
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Initially, Snowden’s own last name couldn’t be used as a handle, as someone had already took it three years ago. But the person hasn’t used it in all this time, so Twitter agreed to let the real Snowden have it.
The former NSA whistleblower’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, confirmed according to the Intercept, that Snowden is the one controlling the account.
And in case the scale of Edward Snowden’s online power isn’t impressive enough to some, here is Twitter’s video map of what happened when he joined.