Many companies create a separate network where new employees are trained, and new offerings are tested before being launched on the production system, Zatko said. Zatko said Twitter had few of the standard security practices used at several tech and other companies with protocols specifying which employees have access to what computer systems and/or maintenance logs of employee activity. Thousands of engineers at Twitter have access to the company’s production system or the computer networks that host the social media platform and users’ data, he said. Prosecutors said an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recruited Ahmad Abouammo to use his insider knowledge to access Twitter accounts and dig up personal information about Saudi dissidents. In August, a former Twitter manager accused of spying for Saudi Arabia was convicted in San Francisco on six criminal counts. The area of great concern is the access of foreign governments and foreign agencies to data that American users may be providing to the platform, he said, adding that Americans have “no idea that they are vulnerable to that possibility.”

Durbin, D-Ill., called Zatko’s allegations concerning. The Indian government since 2021 has asked Twitter to remove as many as 1,400 accounts, according to a Bloomberg News report in July that cited unnamed sources. Twitter challenged the Indian government’s orders in court in June the outcome is pending. “I saw with great confidence a foreign agent placed from India to understand the negotiations,” he said, “and how well they were going for or against” India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Zatko said the Indian government was able to place an agent in Twitter’s India office as an employee while the company and the government were negotiating over the platform’s content policies.

“I think we’d better be putting the mirror on ourselves.” Senate when it comes to competition, when it comes to privacy, when it comes to better funding agencies,” she said. Senate Judiciary member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., cited the lack of action at the Tuesday hearing. “We have not passed one bill out of the U.S. Two Senate bills that would address data privacy for children and minors have been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, but they haven’t received floor action. The Washington Post first disclosed his revelations last month.ĭespite the hearing, Congress isn’t expected to take action to police the behavior of Twitter or other social media companies. His testimony followed complaints that he filed with the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. practice of slapping companies with one-time fines is “priced in” by Twitter and other tech companies as the cost of doing business, he said. regulators are unable to police tech companies, singling out the Federal Trade Commission as being in over its head and allowing tech companies to “grade their own homework.” The U.S. Peiter Zatko, the former Twitter security chief who turned whistleblower, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the social media company’s security practices were so weak that foreign governments were able to place agents on the company’s payroll.

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