Twitter whistleblower to meet with Senate panel Sept. 13

Folks holding cellphones are silhouetted in opposition to a backdrop projected with the Twitter brand on this illustration image taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/

WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Judiciary committee will maintain a listening to on Sept. 13 with Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) former safety chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko to debate allegations from his whistleblower grievance that the social media firm misled regulators.

Zatko, who accused Twitter of falsely claiming it had a stable safety plan and making deceptive statements about its defenses in opposition to hackers and spam accounts, has already mentioned his grievance with staffs of the chair and rating member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Home Vitality and Commerce Committee, and the workers of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in accordance with a spokesperson for Zatko.

In an 84-page grievance, Zatko, a famed hacker broadly often known as “Mudge,” made quite a few claims and alleged Twitter prioritized person progress over decreasing spam, with executives eligible to win particular person bonuses of as a lot as $10 million tied to will increase in every day customers, and nothing explicitly for slicing spam, in accordance with paperwork relayed by congressional investigators. learn extra

Twitter has labeled the grievance a “false narrative.” learn extra

“The Senate Judiciary Committee will examine this challenge additional with a full committee listening to this work interval, and take additional steps as wanted to unravel these alarming allegations,” mentioned committee chair Senator Richard Durbin and prime Republican member Senator Chuck Grassley.

Staffers with Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee additionally met Zatko this week.

Blumenthal has a eager curiosity in Large Tech and wrote in a letter to Federal Commerce Fee chair Lina Khan: “In response to disclosures and proof supplied by Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, a highly-respected cybersecurity knowledgeable who served as Twitter’s Safety Lead from 2020 to 2022, Twitter executives allegedly failed to handle vital safety vulnerabilities, uncared for the mishandling of non-public knowledge, and ignored identified privateness dangers to customers for greater than a decade.”

Blumenthal referred to as for an FTC investigation within the letter.

Reporting by Chris Sanders and Raphael Satter in Washington
Enhancing by Howard Goller and Matthew Lewis

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