Licence to Tweet: Britain’s top spy agency GCHQ has joined Twitter

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And you thought everything had to be hush hush when it comes to the world of spying, espionage and national security?

These days, you'd be wrong – Britain's top intelligence agency GCHQ has joined Twitter.

And got this welcome from its US counterpart.

Naturally, GCHQ is following the CIA, as well as the FBI, NSA – all the acronyms – and several government departments, but it also has some eclectic interests. The intelligence agency also follows international man of mystery James Bond and opera singer Katherine Jenkins. 

"In joining social media GCHQ can use its own voice to talk directly about the important work we do in keeping Britain safe," said GCHQ director of communications Andrew Pike.

The organisation – the first UK intelligence group to join Twitter apparently – said it will talk about its history, mission outcomes, maths, cyber security, innovation, technology, jobs and more.

It will also tweet brainteasers and puzzles after the huge success of the spy agencies Christmas card puzzle.

Funnily enough, spy agencies and Twitter have had a bit of a falling out in recent weeks. The social network cut off access for US intelligence services to collect bulk data from Twitter using a firm called Dataminr, in which it owns a small stake.

Read more: Harry Potter and the curious tale of GCHQ

Meanwhile, the CIA faced a furious backlash after a social media misstep – live tweeting the five year anniversary of the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden.

It's a fine line between interesting promotion and PR disaster. 

A previous attempt to join the 21st century ended in it getting into trouble with a local council. It spray painted the job ads on the pavements of hipster Hackney in a bid to attract the areas tech talent to join the agency. That fell on the wrong side of Hackney council's grafitti policy.

Fingers crossed this new foray goes a little better.

Anyone wanting to discuss the merits – or not – of mass surveillance with the agency are, however, out of luck. Here's what it said about direct messages and replies:

"We review @ messages daily, but don't generally reply to them.

We also won't normally reply to Direct Messages. The limitations of Twitter's format means that we wouldn't be able to give you a full and useful reply."