Shocking Peiter Zatko's Report, Twitter Hires Chinese Agents Who Can Take US Citizen Data

Peiter "Mudge" Zatko is in front of the US Senate. (photo: doc. Reuters)

JAKARTA – Twitter lately seems to be stuck in various problems. Especially after the whistleblower report, who is also a former Twitter Inc executive, showed that the social media company had information about at least one Chinese agent working at the company.

The shocking report first emerged from US Senator Chuck Grassley. He said this in his opening remarks during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, September 13 which featured testimony from the rapporteur, Peiter Zatko.

Zatko, also known as "Mudge," was a notorious hacker who served as Twitter's chief security officer until he was fired last year. He said during the trial that some Twitter employees were concerned that the Chinese government would be able to collect data about the company's users.

He referred to Reuters news last Tuesday detailing internal clashes between some teams seeking to maximize ad revenue opportunities from Chinese advertisers and others concerned about doing business inside China, amid rising geopolitical tensions.

"It's a big internal conundrum," Zatko said, adding that the company was reluctant to turn away from China as the fastest-growing overseas market for advertising revenue.

"In short, if we're already in bed, it's going to be problematic if we lose that revenue stream," he said.

The whistleblower's disclosures noted that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had notified Twitter of at least one Chinese agent within the company, Grassley said in his opening statement.

Zatko said on Tuesday that in the week before he was fired from Twitter, he learned an agent of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), an agent comparable to the US Central Intelligence Agency, was paid on Twitter.

It is not clear whether the alleged agent from China is still working at the company. Twitter itself did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zatko's testimony.

In his testimony, Zatko also said he recalled conversations with other Twitter executives about concerns that foreign agents were inside the company. The executive replied, "Yes, since we already have them, what difference does it make if we have more?"

Elon Musk's demands

Grassley noted that Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal refused to appear at the trial for fear it could jeopardize the company's litigation of Elon Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla Inc. Twitter and Musk will fight in court next October over whether a 44 billion-dollar takeover deal should be finalized.

Later on Tuesday, Twitter will also announce the vote of shareholders for the takeover of the company by Musk. The majority of shareholders have agreed to the deal.

The San Francisco-based company sued Musk for ending the deal, while the Tesla chief executive sued back, accusing Twitter of misinterpreting the number of fake accounts and spams on its service.

A judge from the Delaware court ruled last week that Musk could include Zatko's claim in his case against Twitter, but rejected his request to postpone the trial and should remain on October 17.

The Senate Justice Committee also questioned Zatko's statement over his claims that Twitter misled regulators of its compliance with the 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over improper user data handling.

"Since then, Twitter has made little meaningful progress on basic security, integrity, and privacy systems," said Zatko.

Twitter itself said Zatko was fired for ineffective leadership and poor performance. They also stated and that Zatko's accusations appeared designed to harm Twitter.

Zatko's report contains more than two pages of links to supporting documents, such as emails between Zatko and Agrawal CEO and misinformation assessments on Twitter. The number of documents is very limited compared to those provided by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, which released thousands of pages of internal material about the chaos in the Meta subsidiary.