Fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has opened an account on the social network website Twitter.
His opening tweet was: "Can you hear me now?"
In his profile Mr Snowden says he "used to work for the government. Now I work for the public". He quickly gathered thousands of followers.
So far, Mr Snowden, who is wanted in the US for leaking secrets, only follows one other Twitter user - the US National Security Agency (NSA).
He is believed to be living in Moscow where he is sheltering from US prosecutors.
Mr Snowden left the US in 2013 after leaking to the media details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by US intelligence.
His information made global headlines when the Guardian newspaper reported that the NSA was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.
Mr Snowden is believed to have downloaded 1.7 million secret documents before he left the US.
