Republican presses Elon Musk to protect US user data
In response to concerns expressed by a whistleblower, top Senate Republican Chuck Grassley requested Elon Musk, who just purchased Twitter, to carry out a threat assessment at the social media platform to better protect US user data.
Hacker Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a whistleblower who led security at Twitter until his firing in January, revealed in testimony in September that several staff members were worried the Chinese government would be able to access user data.
Grassley, the top Republican on the US Judiciary Committee, requested Twitter to conduct a threat assessment “of Twitter’s current security posture and systems to better protect user data and privacy” in a letter to Musk dated Tuesday and made public on Wednesday. Moreover, he requested that the committee’s employees be briefed on the findings.
“Twitter collects vast amounts of data on American citizens. Americans have a vested interest in ensuring that their private data is secure, and that the companies which they have entrusted with their private data have not been infiltrated by foreign agents,” Grassley wrote.
A request for comment from Twitter did not immediately receive a response.
Zatko stated that among other risks, a foreign agency could employ malware to steal the personal information of Twitter users and exploit it to access private information on the user’s phone.
Republican presses Elon Musk to protect US user data
The letter to Parag Agrawal, the company’s former CEO who ran it before Musk acquired it in a $44 billion deal in October, underlined some of the issues made in a previous letter to him that Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Dick Durbin delivered to him in September.
According to Grassley, Agrawal did not respond to the letter, citing litigation with Musk.
