India forced Twitter to put agent on payroll, whistleblower says

NEW DELHI: A former Twitter security chief has asserted that the Indian government forced the social media firm to put a government agent on the payroll, according to a whistleblower disclosure with US regulators.

Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko raised the issue with the US Securities and Exchange Commission among other security lapse claims at Twitter.

He said the government agent would have had access to sensitive user data due to Twitter’s weak security infrastructure, according to a redacted version of the complaint uploaded by the Washington Post newspaper and verified by Zatko’s attorney at Whistleblower Aid.

A company source told Reuters that the allegations about the India government had surfaced previously within Twitter, without elaborating further.

“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,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement regarding Zatko’s allegations.

Twitter is engaged in a legal challenge against the Indian government after it asked a local court in July to overturn some government orders to remove content from the social media platform, and alleged abuse of power by officials. The next hearing in the case is set for Thursday.

“The company did not in fact disclose to users that it was believed by the executive team that the Indian government had succeeded in placing agents on the company payroll,” Zatko’s complaint noted.

The complaint stated that thousands of employees still had wide-ranging and poorly tracked internal access to core company software, a situation that for years had led to embarrassing hacks, including the commandeering of accounts held by such high-profile users as Elon Musk and former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Zatko’s complaint alleged he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data.

The Washington Post report said that supporting information for Zatko’s claims had gone to the National Security Division of the US Justice Department and the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.