With two short words - an in-joke for computer programmers - GCHQ, Britain’s electronic surveillance and cyber security agency, joined Twitter.

“Hello, world”, the agency declared on Monday morning in a modest but unprecedented public foray into social media by Britain’s spymasters.

The phrase is a reference to one of the first programs most coders learn to create to function on a computer; using languages such as C, Python, Java or Ruby to get the phrase to appear on screen.

@GCHQ will be used by the agency to improve its public image and try to raise awareness about its work, according to officials at its Cheltenham base. However, those looking for information about the agency’s current or historic operations or capabilities are unlikely to glean much.

Getting to this point has been a tortuous process: GCHQ and all of its staff are subject to draconian security procedures that restrict contact with the outside digital world beyond the agency’s operational channels.

Setting up a presence on social media has taken months of wrangling. Even the content of the first tweet, said one security official, took weeks of meetings to agree upon.

Moving on to social media is a testament to the degree with which the agency, and its masters in Whitehall, now see a need for it to come out of the shadows and begin more publicly extolling its purpose, and the importance of the work it does.

Neither of GCHQ’s two sister agencies, the Secret Intelligence Service (known as MI6) or the Security Service (known as MI5), has yet taken the social media plunge, although both have new websites.

Snowden

While polling suggests most Britons have a high degree of trust in the country’s intelligence agencies, GCHQ still suffers from the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013.

Mr Snowden, a US defence contractor, stole and leaked intelligence documents detailing the extent of digital and internet surveillance programmes undertaken by the US National Security Agency, closely assisted by its British counterpart.

Both agencies have defended the programmes as essential to the fight against terrorism and the need to protect citizens against the increasing dangers of cyber crime and cyber attack.

In the UK, parliamentarians will debate and vote on new laws this year that will codify and aggregate all of the digital powers available to Britain’s spies in a single piece of legislation, the Investigatory Powers bill.

GCHQ’s new director, Robert Hannigan, who took up his post in November 2014, was brought on board with a specific brief to restore trust in the agency and build stronger alliances with organisations both in and outside government.

Despite Mr Hannigan’s efforts, the agency is still fighting large US tech companies over access to customer data that spies say is essential to detecting and thwarting terrorist plots. The new IP bill will force the companies to co-operate with GCHQ or face severe penalties.

GCHQ has also tried to win over the British public, mounting a series of publicity stunts to emphasise its history as well as its esoteric – and equal-opportunities – working environment.

Rainbow

Last May, for the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, the building was lit up in the colours of the rainbow.

More recently, Mr Hannigan gave a speech to apologise for the historic mistreatment of gay people at the agency – most notably its most famous son, Alan Turing, the groundbreaking mathematician, cryptographer and computer scientist.

When it comes to social media engagement, its US counterparts have been quicker off the mark. The NSA joined Twitter in December 2013, while the Central Intelligence Agency now has a presence on the site, too.

Pointedly, the NSA’s is the only account that Mr Snowden, who tweets to an audience of 2 million from Russia, where he has claimed asylum, follows.

Whether Mr Snowden will follow GCHQ remains to be seen. “We hope he does,” said one British security official.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016