Democrat FTC boss turns screws on Elon Musk by demanding he hand over information on layoffs

Elon Musk accused the Biden Administration of ‘arming’ the FTC to investigate his takeover of Twitter, as the Dem-led agency demanded he hand over private information about the company.

The report comes two months after a whistleblower alleged to the FTC that an internal tool used by hackers to tweet from high-profile accounts during the site’s massive 2020 breach is still available to all company engineers. .

The FTC, led by Biden appointee Lina Khan, has asked Twitter Inc to turn over internal communications related to Musk, detailed information on layoffs and other business decisions as part of an investigation into the social media company.

The organization has sent 12 letters to Twitter and its lawyers since Musk’s inauguration in October.

It also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to the company’s records and to provide information on the launch of the revamped subscription service Twitter Blue, according to the report.

The FTC is also seeking Musk to testify in connection with the investigation, the WSJ reported.

Elon Musk has already tweeted about the investigation in response to a post about it by journalist Michael Shellenberger.

‘A shameful case of weaponizing a government agency for political purposes and suppressing the truth!’ Musk wrote.

He responded to another tweet about the investigation by saying, “This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The FTC said it had no immediate comment.

The report by the staff of the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on Weaponizing the Federal Government said that while some of what the FTC had asked for was relevant to its investigation into Twitter, other elements went too far.

“There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, should review all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs all of Twitter’s internal communications about Elon Musk,” the report says.

The agency has been asking Twitter if it has the necessary resources to comply with the privacy consent decree, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last year.

One of the FTC’s concerns was whether Twitter had the necessary staff to comply with a May 2022 agreement with the US regulator in which it agreed to improve its privacy practices and hold people in certain positions accountable.

Concerns had been sparked by mass layoffs at the company.

In May, Twitter agreed to pay a $150 million fine to resolve allegations of misuse of private information and also improve its compliance practices.

A complaint was reportedly filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in January and matches previous claims made by the company’s fired security chief, Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko.

Twitter GodMode, an internal tool used by hackers to tweet from high-profile accounts during the site’s massive 2020 security breach, is still available to all company engineers, a whistleblower has claimed.

If activated, the program in question, labeled ‘GodMode’ by staff for its outsized power, gives any company engineer the ability to tweet from any account, at their own discretion.

The existence of the program came to light in July 2020 following a high-profile hack that saw a large number of high-profile accounts compromised, masterminded by Graham Clark, then 17 years old.

There seems to be a constant cycle of drama coming out of Twitter’s Silicon Valley headquarters ever since Musk bought the app.

Twitter staff claimed yesterday that Elon Musk is accompanied everywhere by two bodyguards when he is at work.

‘Sam’, a former Twitter engineer, said the BBC Panorama that the new self-described ‘Chief Twit’ is followed by ‘at least two bodyguards – very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie [style] bodyguard even when he goes to the bathroom.

He said he thinks Musk doesn’t trust his Twitter employees, so he brought in engineers from Tesla and asked them to evaluate the coding for a few days before deciding who to fire.

Sam said the waves of layoffs, which have seen up to 70% of Twitter’s workforce lose their jobs since October, have resulted in “so much broken stuff” with “nobody taking care of it.”

He said: ‘To someone on the inside, it’s like a building where all the pieces are on fire.’

Twitter has seen a significant reduction in staff in recent months, pushing employees to either adopt the “hardcore” lifestyle of what Musk calls Twitter 2.0 or leave.

Nearly half the workforce was laid off in November, days after Musk bought the company and took the top spot.

But the company made headlines again when another 200 people were laid off in February, including senior staff who appeared to back the new direction late last year.

Yesterday, a designer sparred with Musk on Twitter after nine days without being able to access his work accounts.

Musk asked what work he did for the company, and after the designer gave him a list, he received an email saying he had been fired.

The CEO of Twitter claimed in the public forum today that his former team member ‘he didn’t do any real work, he claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from writing, but at the same time he was tweeting up a storm.

Staff cuts have reportedly made it difficult for Twitter’s staff team to maintain the site.

The social network had four widespread outages in February, almost half of the nine recorded in all of 2022.

More recently, the site pull apart on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Musk responded to the BBC’s Panorama report based on the testimony of former employees and academic research which concluded that the Twitter team failed to protect users from state-coordinated misinformation, trolling and sexual exploitation. childish.

The research showed that there was a 69% increase in new accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles since the takeover.

The findings were due to changes to the website’s features and reductions in staff, they said.

The chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, who briefly became the world’s richest man again in late February, is believed to have an extensive security team.

According to his father, Musk has a team of ‘100‘ Security guards for your protection.

In January, a video went viral of Musk leaving a trial in San Francisco, surrounded by men in suits protecting him as he climbs into a Tesla.

No official details about the team have been released, as usual.