India forced Twitter to keep agent with data access: whistleblower

Twitter’s former head of security Peiter Zatko has alleged that the social media intermediary “deceived” regulators in the US as well the platform’s own board of directors about its efforts in defence against hackers as well as bots and spam, The Washington Post reported.

The report, quoting Zatko’s complaint to federal regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission, Congress and others, also alleged that the Indian government had forced Twitter to keep on its payroll one of its agents, who had access to user data even during the protests against the incumbent government.

“Zatko’s complaint alleges he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes,” The Washington Post said in its report.


The complaint by Zatko, the newspaper said, was made in July.

In its response to ET’s queries, a spokesperson for Twitter said that the allegations made were “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context”.

“Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko's allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.

Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be,” the spokesperson said.

Officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology could not be immediately reached for comment. An email sent to the ministry did not elicit any response till press time.