Expect 140-character posts about the group’s history, mission outcomes, languages, math, cyber security, technology and innovation, and job opportunities, as well as events, publications, news, blogs, and opinions.
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The communications headquarters of the British government has joined Twitter.
In an email sent to journalists this morning marked “STRICTLY EMBARGOED” and “SECURITY CLASSIFICATION:OFFICIAL” in all caps, GCHQ, the UK’s signals intelligence agency, announced what it called “a big step for the organisation”: It was going to send its first ever tweet.
So far, however, the GCHQ’s account is not that active.
The agency says that it wants to become more accessible and for people to better understand what its work is about.
“Hello, world” was chosen as the first tweet as it is often the first thing computer whizzes learn to write in coding programmes.
In a statement, GCHQ media head Andrew Pike said the agency would not share intelligence updates or give away the “tradecraft” it employs.
“We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology”, along with maths and cybersecurity.
Funnily enough, spy agencies and Twitter have had a bit of a falling out in recent weeks.
Its very first tweet, in fact, is just a simple greeting attached to the agency’s press release.
The account is proving a little slow to pick up followers at the moment, but you can bolster the numbers by tracking down GCHQ on Twitter yourself.
Others pointed out that Edward Snowden’s account was not included in the early flurry of follows, while the development also prompted speculation over whether Britain’s two other intelligence agencies – MI5 and MI6 – may follow suit.
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“As a technical organisation with computing at its core, “Hello, world” resonated with us because this is how many of our staff, who are amongst some of the world’s most proficient programmers, started”.
