Snowden Sends Distress Signal As His Whereabouts Remain Unknown

Internet programmers have deciphered a mysterious Tweet sent out by Edward Snowden last week, revealing that the NSA whistleblower may be in grave danger.  Users on Reddit say that the 64-character Tweet sent out on 5th August, 2016, was a distress signal to those in the know. Sputniknews.com reports: Edward Snowden’s unexplained tweet of a 64-character hex code on Friday led many to question whether the message was a “dead man’s switch,” an automatic message set to release if the user is killed or captured, which, in that event, would prompt friends and journalists to release documents. Alternate narratives were quickly proposed, including one purported to be by the whistleblower’s girlfriend, saying that he had been killed, while others speculated that the encrypted tweet, which was quickly erased, was a signal by an alive and well Edward Snowden, ahead of a major document release. Concerns for the whistleblower subsided late Saturday when journalist Glenn Greenwald responded to a query via Twitter about Snowden’s safety, saying that, “he’s fine.” The message was mirrored, albeit not in direct terms, by journalist Barton Gellman. Still, mystery shrouds Snowden, whose account has been inactive for over 160 hours, an unprecedented time period for the outspoken civil liberties champion, after his mystery tweet, which was preceded by the similarly cryptic message, “it’s time,” only days [...]