"Can you hear me now?"

And with that, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden entered the social media fray of Twitter on Tuesday morning under the username @snowden.

Within hours, the individual credited with leaking some of the most closely-guarded secrets of the U.S. intelligence community had garnered hundreds of thousands of followers—nearly 300,000 and quickly rising as of this writing.

Proving that he might have the requisite sense of humor for an engaging Twitter presence, Snowden himself—at least so far—has chosen only one account to follow: his former employer, the NSA (@NSAGov).

Writing at The Intercept, journalist Dan Froomkin offered a laudatory welcome by saying that by joining the prominent social media platform—and by using his own voice to manage the account—Snowden will establish himself "even more firmly as a major figure in the public discourse about surveillance and privacy that he jump-started in June 2013."

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox.







Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists most closely associated with Snowden and the leaks he provided, also chimed in by saying that in addition to the inspiration stirred by his initial decision to blow the whistle on the NSA's mass surveillance, Snowden's voice and his "ability to participate in the debate he started - rather than sitting incommunicado in a US cage for decades - has been crucial."

Last week, with a push from civil liberties and online privacy advocates, a new effort—nicknamed the 'Snowden Treaty'—was launched to forge an international agreement that would "curtail mass surveillance and protect the rights of whistleblowers."

Meanwhile, back on Twitter:

Tweets about @Snowden