The United Kingdom’s chief intelligence agency took a step on Monday toward joining its American counterparts on Twitter.
“We want [Government Communications Headquarters] to be more accessible and to help the public understand more about our work,” the agency said in a press release. “We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology, maths, cybersecurity and other topics where we have a view.”
Hello, world. https://t.co/SROtSsE8KB
— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016
The account’s first tweet, “Hello, world,” is the often the first phrase produced by software engineers when learning a new programming language. “As a technical organisation with computing at its core, it resonated with many of our staff who have learnt to program during their career,” the agency said.
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The decision to join Twitter puts GCHQ in the company of American counterparts like the NSA and CIA, which have used social media for years, and with growing creativity. In May, the CIA used Twitter to relive the raid that killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, “live tweeting” the event “as if it were happening today.”
Though GCHQ was founded in 1919, its existence was kept secret until 1976. After leaks in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the interconnectedness of the surveillance programs operated by the agencies, GCHQ has increasingly worked to engage with the media to explain its work.
Though Snowden’s work didn’t win him much acclaim among Western intelligence operatives, it did win superior popularity on social media. The American fugitive has 2.06 million followers on Twitter compared to just 203,000 for the NSA and, as of mid-Monday, 11,000 for GCHQ.
