Edward Snowden has mostly kept a low profile since his mass dump of data on NSA surveillance to the media. Today though he launched a Twitter account.

Tweeting as @Snowden, the whistleblower announced his account to the world by tweeting: "Can you hear me now?".

His account seems to be authentic – it is verified by Twitter.

Snowden’s bio says he is a director of an organisation called Freedom of the Press, a transparancy journalism advocacy group.

He was welcomed onto Twitter by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist to whom he leaked the NSA documents.

Glenn Greenwald welcomes Edward Snowden to Twitter.