JUNE 2019 UPDATE:
This account was banned shortly after this article was published. That's a good sign that it was in fact a hoax. Another account was created after the twitter ban, this time using the handle @NSA_QIL2.
This new account no longer claims to be the official NSA account for operations... in it's profile it simply says 'official account of NSAQIL' which is merely a string of letters. This appears to be an attempt to not directly claim it is an official account of the NSA, to prevent being banned again.
Below is what I had written about the original account.
Recently an unverified twitter account was created, that claims to be the Child Crimes division of the NSA.
This account has been very active, and immediately started making pizzagate and Qanon related tweets, which spawned discussions about whether or not the account is fake.
(Note that blue checkmarks are optional, and not all government accounts have them.)
Those that believe it's fake say it's easy to make a fake account, and that the extremely disturbing topics (like promoting the existence of a video where HRC sacrifices kids by cutting off their faces) are not indicative of things a government official would disclose so casually to the public.
Those that believe it's real, say it's against the law to impersonate a government agency, and believe no one would be foolish enough to do that, while also tagging the official NSA account.
I decided to look into spoof government accounts, and this is what I found from some brief research.
PRISM US GOV - @PRISM_NSA
This is a fake account created in 2013, that claims to be the PRISM division of the NSA. It uses the official PRISM logo, has retweeted @NSAGov tweets, and has tagged accounts such as @realDonaldTrump and @CIA.
Twitter has allowed this account to remain active, even though you can see from some of it's tweets, that it is clearly a spoof account.
NSA - @NSA
This is a fake account created in 2009. It claims to be the NSA, and while it uses an unusual profile picture, the header picture is of the NSA data center in Utah. This account is very active, and has tagged @NSAGov, along with many other official government accounts.
What's significant here, is that most people assume that the NSA uses only those 3 letters as it's twitter tag, like the CIA and FBI do. This means there are numerous tweets sent to @NSA everyday from people all over the world, who assume they are tweeting to the official NSA account. This fake account receives those tweets, and responds to them, as if they are the official NSA account.
Despite all this, Twitter has allowed this account to remain active for nearly 10 years.
NSA Public Relations - @NSA_PR
This fake account was created in 2013. It uses an official looking logo and header, and links to the official NSA website. It does say 'obvious parody' at the end of it's profile description, but unless people go to the profile and read the entire description, it would appear official.
This account has tagged @NSAGov, as well as other government agencies and @realDonaldTrump.
NSA Public Relations - @NSApubrel
Account Suspended
This fake account was created in 2013, and also claimed to be the public relations office for the NSA. It retweeted @NSAcareers (an official NSA account), and tagged @whitehouse. It's possible it tagged the @NSAGov account, but because it was suspended at some point, there are only a few tweets from this account remaining on the internet.
The Atlantic had this to say, in an article they wrote about the @NSApubrel account:
Even after talking to the NSA about it, the author didn't say anything about any legal consequences... they just described it as someone trolling.
As this article has shown, spoof government accounts are not as taboo as some people might think. Despite the threat of violating Twitter TOS, or even breaking the law, people sometimes create fake NSA accounts, and tag the official NSA account.
Not only that, but Twitter allows some of these accounts to remain active.
If the NSA_QIL account is a hoax, it's a win-win for the creator. If Twitter allows it to remain active, it will add credibility. If Twitter deletes it, many people will believe it was deleted to silence the truth, which will add credibility in their eyes.
Until there is substantial verification of the account (blue checkmark, being followed by official government accounts, confirmation from NSA, etc.), I would suggest taking it with an extra large grain of salt.
Comments