Edward Snowden Dead? Mysterious Tweet Is Sending Conspiracy Theorists Into A Meltdown

[uawchild]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by In_The_Wind (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Inquisitr

What is up with Edward Snowden? The former NSA contractor turned whistle-blower tweeted out a cryptic message to more than 2 million of his followers on Friday, sparking unrest as to his safety and whereabouts. While Mashable reports that the string of letters and numbers may be a cryptic code that Snowden sent someone through the micro-blogging site, or it may be that Snowden simply typed some gibberish on his phone to send the internet into a meltdown so he could amuse himself, some others contend that the mysterious tweet could point towards something way more ominous.

According to Your News Wire, the mysterious tweet has sparked fears that it may be a “dead man’s switch,” which would effectively mean that Edward Snowden is either missing or dead. For those of you who might not know, a dead man’s switch is a message set up to be sent automatically if the account holder does not perform a regular check-in. In Snowden’s case, the automatically-generated message would be the key to the encrypted files he distributed among journalists.


In 2013, Snowden sent the entire intelligence community into shock when he released a set of classified files which confirmed that the National Security Agency — and consequently the American government — had been snooping around in people’s private lives. The release confirmed long-held fears that the NSA, in association with Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance and the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, was using advanced surveillance techniques to intrude into people’s lives, sparking a vigorous public discourse about mass surveillance and privacy in the information age.

Read more: http://www.inquisitr.com/3389936/edward-snowden-dead-mysterious-tweet-is-sending-conspiracy-theorists-into-a-meltdown/

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Interesting and more interesting...

[WhiteTara]

1. I wish your source was more reliable than Inquisitr

they have been accused of lies and plagiarism

[think]

2. Here's Mashable's write up on it:

http://mashable.com/2016/08/05/edward-snowden-tweet-code/#v1ZpKWH_uOqz

[uawchild]

4. Source seemed clean on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitr

But if you have links to something significant, please share.

I am not wedded to this source, the article just stood out.

[Bradical79]

3. Looks like hexadecimal -nt

[emulatorloo]

5. Or butt-texting

[William Seger]

17. Not likely

It's digits 0 to 9 plus lowercase characters a to f, and it's 64 characters long, so it's almost certainly the hex representation of a 256-bit number.

[emulatorloo]

18. Ok, drunk-tweeting then

[Bradical79]

19. So, an encryption key? -nt

[William Seger]

20. That seems likely (n/t)

[backscatter712]

27. Most likely crypto-related.

Perhaps a cryptographic signature or key.

[Renew Deal]

6. Didn't he send another cryptic tweet a few days ago?

Something about news soon?

[VMA131Marine]

7. This is not on his current Twitter Feed that I can see

[Curtland1015]

8. He posted just yesterday. What does he have this "switch" set to? Three hours?

Honestly, I don't keep up with the guy, so I don't know how crazy it is that he hasn't tweeted since yesterday.

[LeftyMom]

13. Looking at his twitter it doesn't appear to be unusual at all.

He appears to typically tweet once a day, give or take. Sometimes two tweets a day, sometimes no tweets for two days.

He appears to go on binges where he retweets several times in a day but then doesn't retweet anything for several days, so one retweet on the fifth and nothing since also doesn't seem strange.

[4bucksagallon]

9. Dead? I vote for that.... Traitors don't always get a trial..

[rjsquirrel]

26. Traitor or not

those who rely on the hospitality of Vladimir Putin often wish they'd chosen another path.

[7962]

39. And there you have it.

[Hekate]

42. True dat

[billhicks76]

34. BS. The Real Traitors Betrayed The Constitution

Anyone who cares about our sacred freedoms knows this. Only military contractors and other traitors fleecing our treasury and spying on the American People to manipulate politicians, attorneys, judges and journalist or to further their Drug War scam don't like it.

[wildbilln864]

43. well said thank you. n/t

[Rex]

10. Looks like a temporary internet file, or part of windows registry snore...

Maybe he is mad that his buddy is getting all the attention.

[uawchild]

11. Tweet from Barton Gellman

Barton Gellman ?@bartongellman 9m9 minutes ago
1. Everyone requesting proof of life for me and @Snowden, take a deep breath.
2. Some tweets have private meaning.
3. My @SecureDrop is up.




"Edward Snowden, the former NSA agent and whistleblower wrote a fairly cryptic post on Twitter on Wednesday (3 August). And, that has sparked curiosity among the inhabitants of the Twitterverse. "It's time", Snowden said in his post, however, he refrained from divulging anything in detail.

The post also tagged journalist Barton Gellman, who is currently writing about Snowden's experiences working in the intelligence community. In his tweet, the whistleblower also invites his former associates and acquaintances to reach out to him "securely". Gellman also posted a corresponding tweet in which he invited people to contact him to help him chart Snowden's work and "tell it truthfully".
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/whistleblower-edward-snowden-sparks-curiosity-cryptic-tweet-its-time-1574308

[bananakabob]

12. Let's hope.

n/t

[Bradical79]

15. Wow, some of you are really disgusting human beings. -nt

[bananakabob]

30. Don't care for traitors who lie, steal, put people at risk.

And flee to China and Russia.

[billhicks76]

35. Like Every Republican Ever?

Why aren't you fighting against an unconstitutional drug war or spying on powerful people to blackmail them to vote, judge or write a certain way. If you want to whine that Snowden is a traitor then you must support illegal wars and spying too.

[bananakabob]

37. Yes, clearly, not supporting Snowden means I support illegal wars.

[billhicks76]

38. Sorry I Don't Support Bush

Spying on the Americam People to commit crimes, leverage powerful people or promote an immoral drug war is 1 million times worse that what Snowden did. There is a trail of bodies and ruined lives from these policies that isn't even countable at this point.

[QC]

48. This place is becoming Free Republic for conservative Democrats.

A lot has changed since I joined in 2001, when we DUers opposed things like illegal wars, blanket surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, cutting...oops...reforming Social Security, shipping jobs out of the country, etc.

[LeftyMom]

14. PGP key?

[Gman]

16. Looks like hash code to decrypt something.

[backscatter712]

28. It's almost certainly crypto of some sort.

Possibly to show a reporter he is who he says he is.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

21. Related to this tweet?

https://twitter.com/bartongellman

[uawchild]

22. Seems so n/t

[catbyte]

23. Looks like when my cat walks on my keyboard.

[ucrdem]

24. here's what I got when I added .JPG to the end . . .

p.s. j/k

[rjsquirrel]

25. OMG it's the key to everything!

The Internet was designed for cats!

[Monk06]

40. Serious Kitten is wonderin what all the fuss is about

[Shankapotomus]

44. Good idea

Somebody should put that pic up using Snowden's mystery tweet as the file name.

[They_Live]

29. Bitcoin hack??!!!

[Cryptoad]

31. Last I heard,,,,,,,

9R>/AL>/K#>/K#>/R1>9A:Lxy>/AL>/A#>/KA:&%>Q9:L^c>/A^>#y>Q9:+#>/K#>/KA&5?MH>5* 9z>Lx9>LE+ Jz>LEx 1/">L*M 9O>Q% 1/G:LxO>5* 9z>Q% 1aJ>LEx 1vO>&^?xaU>Lx">LxU>LxO>5* 9z>Q% 1aJ>LEx 1vO>&% 1aU>LEa>LEa>LEH>LEx Tv> J&?xaJ>LEx 1vO>#C

decoded: " Still shacked up in Big Daddy Putin's Crimea beach house!"

[saidsimplesimon]

32. The UAW was awesome,

could be again with the proper focus on exports instead of TPP.

That said, WTF, Snowden was living on borrowed time. Nothing, I mean nothing happens in Russia without Czar Putin's approval (or that of his mafia style oligarchs). It is my hope that whistle blower Snowden will turn up somewhere west of Russia.

[randome]

33. Latvia is west of Russia.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

[SeattleVet]

36. I'm guessing that this may be the decryption key for the Insurance...

file he uploaded in mid June. That file was 94Gb, and encrypted in aes256, like his previous Insurance files on international cables. This was the file associated with the Hillary emails that he had released - but the insurance file was much larger than the known data from those, so what may be in there is anybody's guess.

He had stated that the key would be released when the time was right, or if anything happened to him.

[NWCorona]

46. That was my first thought too

[randome]

47. There is no insurance file any more than there was a cache of BoA documents, per Assange.

It's all for show and often I don't think even Snowden is aware of it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

[Midnight Writer]

41. I have translation: Thank You Trump for gift of Melania. Putin enjoys vry(sic) much.

[randome]

45. "Donald, I'm sorry my Meredith McIver cover was blown. Let's try again some time."

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

[In_The_Wind]

49. Locking

You might want to post again in GD or Creative Speculation.