@eJosephSnowden is not Edward Snowden

Started by ReadWrite, Jul 04, 2013, 03:01 AM

ReadWrite

One of the world's most wanted men is on the lamb ... and tweeting about it. At least that is what one satirist would have us believe.

Despite various tweets from influential types in the digital privacy space calling @eJosephSnowden a fake—including PRISM story breaker and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald last month—the satirical account with 20,000+ followers is still fooling the masses.

I support @EJosephSnowden. A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. You are a World Hero.

— Alexa Núñez (@alexsn94) July 3, 2013
 Journalists, teachers, authors, celebrities like Adam Baldwin and Roseanne Barr, and even John McAfee have tweeted at the handle as if it is real. The Verge law and privacy journalist Matt Stroud follows the account, as does esteemed law professor Lawrence Lessig. To be fair to those duped, the account does tweet news and opinion someone like Snowden would share, which is done by design. Other tweets, however, are clearly inflammatory and the work of a troll. Take this tweet from last week, for example:

Why don't you peasant trash get it? Brad's a fag, Julian's raping everything that moves, Ellsberg is insane, and Glenn Greenwald sells porn!

— Edward Snowden (@EJosephSnowden) June 29, 2013
  ...which managed to fool and anger a few people, including one woman in Canada who takes issue with being called peasant trash:

@bakerski @EJosephSnowden Can't believe some of his recent tweets! Who the hell does he think he is? "Peasant Trash"? "Fag"?

— lisa victoria smith (@lisavictoriasmi) June 29, 2013
Speaking of trolls, the account is actually controlled by a writer at the Internet Chronicle.SU (think Encyclopedia Dramatica meets The Onion about the hackerspace). Going by the name Ed Snowden, in a blog post last month about the twitter account titled "SNOW JOB: Being Edward Snowden," he writes he was inspired by the "too-impulsive media environment" in creating the account.

"Too-impulsive media environment" may be the wrong way to describe this Twitter fascination.

"To anyone who understood the implications of Snowden's claims, the very existence of a Twitter account at all should have seemed impossible and thereby ironic," writes Ed Snowden, who describes the tweets themselves as a, "cartoonishly radical caricature of the e-dissident." A case of people seeing what they want to see? Sure.  

But, but, but ... the account has been tweeting since 2011, so it can't be a fake you say! Well, the Twitter account used to operate under a different name, one related to the Chronicle.SU. This explains all the older tweets pre-scandal comprised almost entirely of links to articles on the satire site, like this one about troll expert and Gawker writer Adrian Chen dying in a car crash. And then there is this one, which is oddly pertinent even with the name change:

   

 

 

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