Foreign Govts Could Feast Over Twitter’s Careless Collection of Data: Zatko

A whistleblower testified before Congress that Twitter’s careless collection and storage of user data

A Twitter whistleblower testified before Congress that Twitter’s careless collection and storage of user data cause real harm to real people, prompting senators to grapple with Washington’s inability to effectively regulate major social networks, whose penetration of the company may have exceeded what’s currently known. The company’s cybersecurity failures make it vulnerable to exploitation. Zatko, formerly Twitter’s head of security, was characterized as having a relative lack of interest in the topic from company leadership. The Twitter company did not track who had actually gotten a look at particular information and almost always had to learn about suspected government agents from outsiders such as law enforcement.  

Security failures cause real harm to real people:

Zatko alleges that Twitter makes little effort to fight spam accounts and has shockingly insufficient cybersecurity defenses. He also said the failure to track data, combined with collecting more information than was necessary, meant the company’s thousands of engineers had to be given access to a lot of user data by default just to do their jobs information. Zatko says that puts company systems at risk and also uses information, which is a big deal because a lot of Indian activists go on Twitter to protest their government. He says Twitter is a decade behind when it comes to basic security practices. He described an executive team that was financially incentivized to ignore root problems, such as employees having too much access to data. Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its board of directors. Twitter’s CEO Parag Agarwal says an appearance before the committee could have jeopardized the company’s lawsuit against Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO.  A judge recently gave Musk the green light to bring in some of Zatko’s allegations about spam into his claims.