Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who has been at the center of a surveillance scandal, was revealed to have been using the online pseudonym "The True HOOHA" when he worked for an anime company called Ryuhana Press, according to a new Reuters report.
What happens when you search the internet for that name? Thanks to Twitter user @Nelikli, we were pointed to a profile on the Ars Technica forums that sure seems like it is Snowden.
(We've included screenshots of the posts below, but they may be hard to see in some formats. Please check the links if you cannot see).
This user, TheTrueHOOHA, posted about the NSA in 2006:
In 2003 he started a thread asking for help on how to hide his IP address online. When a fellow Ars Technica user asked why, he responded by talking about the Patriot Act:
Here's a post from 2010, discussing possible exploitation of Cisco's wiretapping system:
Can we be sure that "TheTrueHOOHA" is Snowden? Probably. Here he is mentioning his old workplace:
In 2006 he mentioned that he worked for the Department of State and had to serve two years abroad. After asking where others would like to be posted, he said that China would be one place he'd like to live:
In another post he gave his email address, which was the same email address Snowden used at Ryuhana Press:
According to the Guardian, Snowden had been working as an employee of the NSA through various outside contractors for the past four years, and got his first job with the agency as a security guard some time in 2003 or 2004, before joining the CIA. He was stationed in Switzerland by the CIA in 2007, the Guardian reports.