Electronic surveillance

What Edward Snowden On Twitter Could Mean For The Presidential Race

But it's already clear that Twitter will provide Snowden an enormous platform, should he decide to wade into the campaign's policy debates from Moscow. Within four hours of his first tweet, Snowden had amassed 400,000 followers.

Snowden's revelations about the National Security Agency's vast web of domestic surveillance made international headlines in 2013. But until now, the issue has largely been dormant in the presidential campaign.

One notable exception: an intense back-and-forth between Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the first Republican presidential debate that ended with Paul repeatedly yelling "get a warrant!" as Christie called the senator's NSA opposition "completely ridiculous."