14 DAY TRIAL // In case you didn't know, the NSA has a spy-only Twitter-like social network called eChirp with some 60,000 users.
Motherboard filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act and found out that the NSA's service is quite popular among the American spies.
eChirp, which is a "microblogging application" providing a fast and informal messaging system with the purpose of enhancing and promoting information sharing and collaboration, is widely used among American spies. Until now, knowledge of the Twitter copy was limited at best, while the number of users was a mystery. Thanks to the reply Motherboard got, however, it is now known that there are tens of thousands of users, or at the very least, that was the number back in 2013.
According to the NSA's response, in 2013 there were 60,593 top secret users on eChirp, 25,344 secret users and 15,468 unclassified. They produced 875,160 top secret posts, 51,632 secret posts and 56,601 unclassified tweets.
The service is obviously inspired by Twitter and it is invitation-only. It seems the service works pretty much like Twitter - messages have a limit of 140 characters - and it is used to enhance and promote information-sharing.
The NSA claims eChirp is perfectly suitable for "fast-breaking situational awareness events."
The social life of spies
Don't think you can get on the service to see what's in there, though. In fact, eChirp is part of Interlink, which is a group of secure intranets used by the spy agencies of the United States. That means that you can only get to it if you work in the intelligence community or have access to Interlink. That, and if you get an express invitation to get in.
This isn't the only "social" network the intelligence community has at its disposal. In fact, there's also A-Space, which stands for Analytic Space, which is a sort of Facebook for spies. Then, there's also Intellipedia, which is a Wikipedia-like service used by Intelligence, Defense, Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, and Diplomatic Communities.