Twitter Whistle-Blower Will Testify Before Congress on Security Failures
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing featuring testimony from Twitter whistle-blower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko on Sept. 13, the panel's leaders announced on Wednesday.
The committee said it had subpoenaed Zatko, the company's former security chief, to appear a day after he went public with allegations that Twitter has failed to adequately protect data on its hundreds of millions of users, leaving their personal information open to hackers and spies.
“Mr. Zatko's allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at Twitter raise serious concerns,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the panel's top Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
“If these claims are accurate, they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world,” the senators said in the statement.
The committee plans to investigate further with a full hearing and take additional steps as needed to get to the bottom of the allegations, according to the statement.
Zatko, who oversaw Twitter's security from 2020 until he was fired six months ago, submitted reports outlining his claims to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. He alleged that Twitter's head of site integrity told him that the social media company didn't know how many bots, or automated accounts, are on its platform.
Twitter rejected the whistle-blower's claims, describing them in a statement as a false narrative “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.” Zatko was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance,” Twitter said.
John Tye, chief disclosure officer of Whistleblower Aid, which is
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