Twitter whistleblower takes cybersecurity issues public, says tech giant 'prevented' him from fixing issues
Whistleblower and former security chief for Twitter Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko was fired in January after raising red flag on security issues
Whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko's layer John Tye shared on "Mornings with Maria," Wednesday, that Zatko found "extreme, egregious deficiencies" in Twitter's privacy and security measures. After bringing it to the attention of former CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter executives, Tye explained Zatko was fired for "ineffective leadership and poor performance" according to a Twitter spokesperson, and decided to turn to Congress.
TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER ALLEGATIONS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
JOHN TYE: So in July 2020, a couple of teenagers in Florida in their parents' bedrooms hacked into the platform and began tweeting as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama demanding bitcoin. And this was a very humiliating hack. He [Peiter Zatko] was brought in by Jack Dorsey personally to get to the bottom of that and many other issues at the company. He made a lot of progress on some things, but was ultimately prevented from fixing these problems. And so he is hoping that users, Congress - this is a bipartisan investigation - law enforcement agencies, potentially other governments are able to get the information they need to run investigations, potentially bring enforcement actions, legislate to ensure that users have meaningful privacy, that the integrity of the content on the platforms is protected, that it's not used to manipulate elections or anything else. And there's generally a lot more understanding that users need to make informed decisions.
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