It looks as if the CIA’s new status as the wittiest intelligence agency on Twitter is just the latest form of social-media spy subterfuge.
In celebration of it’s one-month “twitterversary” last week, the spy agency jokingly tweeted the answers to five of the top questions asked of it on social media, which included comical bits like “No, we don’t know where Tupac is,” and “No, we don’t know your password, so we can’t send it to you.” (RELATED: The CIA Celebrates It’s Twitter-versary By Answering Your Top Five Conspiracy Questions)
The latter quip may not be entirely accurate, however, according to a recent report about National Security Agency Surveillance capabilities by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman.
In a Friday article following up on his recent NSA disclosure about the majority of agency intercepted communications belonging to American citizens, Barton called out the agency on its misleading, although funny, tweet. (RELATED: Nine Out Of 10 NSA Intercepts Belong To US Citizens, Non-Targets)
“The CIA opened a Twitter account last month and has used cheeky humor to win a large following in a short time. On Monday, the account sent out this announcement: ‘No, we don’t know your password, so we can’t send it to you.’ It went viral, with more than 12,000 retweets,” Barton wrote.
“As it happens, the NSA files we examined included 1,152 ‘minimized U.S. passwords,’ meaning passwords to American e-mail and chat accounts intercepted from U.S. data links. Don’t expect tech support from Langley, but the CIA does have access to that raw traffic.”
The reporter declined to elaborate on the agency’s actual knowledge of rapper Tupac’s whereabouts.