Privacy Dies as Court Permits Twitter to Look into Musk’s Messages

Elon Musk vs Twitter contested how much information Twitter could seek about Zatko

The Delaware Court of Chancery says Twitter can proceed with a limited probe to figure out whether whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko contacted billionaire Elon Musk's lawyers before he backed out of the deal. The decision was released shortly before Musk reportedly asked to close the deal on its original terms. Musk vs Twitter contested how much information Twitter could seek about Zatko, who has alleged that Twitter concealed important information about its bot problem before Musk proposed acquiring it.

Zatko revealed his claims publicly in August, and he's denied contacting Musk or any of his representatives before that. But in court, Musk and Twitter have been fighting over an "unusual" email sent to Musk's attorney Alex Spiro from an anonymous ProtonMail account on May 6th. The sender claimed to be "a former exec at Twitter leading teams directly involving Trust & Safety/Content Moderation" and offered Musk information on Twitter through alternate channels. Musk ultimately paused the deal in mid-May.

In the letter, sent a day after news broke that Elon Musk would seek to seal the deal with Twitter under the original terms, Judge McCormick is weighing in with an important observation: The trial will still move forward unless either party does something to formally change that.

"The parties have not filed a stipulation to stay this action, nor has any party moved for a stay," Judge McCormick wrote. "I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on October 17, 2022."

The bulk of the letter explores Twitter's concern about the "allegedly deficient production of text messages and other instant messages to and from Elon Musk." In other words, Twitter thinks that some key conversations were not turned over in last week's trove of Musk's texts with a laundry list of Silicon Valley hotshots. So, Twitter wants to compel the billionaire to cough up all relevant messages from January 1 to July 8. Twitter went so far as to accuse Musk of intentionally deleting or withholding "damaging messages." Judge McCormick heard arguments about this specific subset of the broader drama on September 27.