More Trouble for Twitter

Mr. Pieter Zatko’s, former Head of Security at Twitter, hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee has worsened Twitter’s chance of making a strong case in its favor against the ongoing battle with Mr.Musk. Furthering to the allegations of lax security practices at Twitter, Mr. Zatko went on to highlight that the company had a Chinese agent working for the Ministry of State Security on its payroll. 

The company was notified by the FBI of at least one agent being employed by the company. Zatko had also raised concerns about the hiring of agents from other countries such as India, which apparently forced Twitter to hire Government Agents. Again, this is not the first time Twitter has encountered employees working for other country’s interests – a former employee was convicted for working as an agent for Saudia Arabia. 

Twitter collects large amounts of data about its users and with most Twitter employees having unrestrained access to this information poses a great security and privacy threat to its users. If these new allegations are true, then these concerns have just blown through the roof as countries use these avenues to gather sensitive information about its citizens and target dissidents. 

Its worrisome to know that big tech companies that are fundamentally built for the purpose of freedom of speech, thoughts and opinions are being used by authoritarian Governments to identify and suppress the very same thing. 

Twitter refused to comment and Mr. Agarwal refused to appear before the committee citing reasons that it would jeopardize Twitter’s ongoing litigation with Mr.Musk. 

You can read more about the hearing from Wired, CNN and Engadget,