Bombshell report: Twitter’s ex-security chief calls platform a threat to national security
The whistleblower says that the U.S. warned Twitter that one or more workers were working for another government
The disclosure, sent to federal agencies and Congress, characterizes Twitter as a mismanaged company swirling with chaos. The report says that Twitter allowed approximately half of its workforce to have access to its main controls. Zatko also claims that the U.S. government provided Twitter with specific evidence showing that at least one employee and perhaps more, were working for another government’s intelligence service.
Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko
The document alleges that current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former chief technology officer who replaced co-founder Jack Dorsey when he stepped down last year, told Zatko that Twitter should give in to Russian demands that would have meant censorship or surveillance of the site. Zatko wrote in his document that “The fact that Twitter’s current CEO even suggested Twitter become complicit with the Putin regime is cause for concern about Twitter’s effects on U.S. national security.”
Another claim made by the whistleblower is that Twitter had “never been in compliance” with demands made by the FTC a decade ago. He also says that Twitter suffers from an “anomalously high rate of security incidents,” running at a rate of about one per week forcing the company to make disclosures to government agencies. Zatko was fired by Twitter this past February and wrote Twitter’s board to inform them that “Based on my professional experience, peer companies do not have this magnitude or volume of incidents.”
This report should help Elon Musk with his lawsuit against Twitter
Today’s bombshell report could help Elon Musk whose $44 billion bid for Twitter has been halted over Twitter’s refusal to provide data to confirm the percentage of bots on the site. Musk says the figure is higher than Twitter claims and both parties are suing each other as the Tesla CEO seeks to terminate his bid. The papers signed by Musk for the acquisition are binding and they do not mention anything about Twitter having a certain percentage of accounts that are controlled by bots.
Still, Musk says that a high number of bot accounts can degrade the user experience on the site and also negatively impact the long-term value of his purchase. The case, to be heard in Delaware Chancery Court, will take place starting in October. Zatko was told in early 2021, well before Musk made his offer, that Twitter does not know how many bots are on the site and said that Twitter “had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bots” fearing that it would hurt the valuation of the firm.
You can be sure that Musk’s legal team has been going over the document written by the whistleblower circling the part about the company’s reluctance to count the number of bot accounts.
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