Republican Senate Warns Elon Musk of Twitter's Data Protection Flaws

Republican US Senate Member Chuck Grassley (photo: twitter @ChuckGrassley)

JAKARTA – Republican Member of the US Senate, Chuck Grassley, urged Elon Musk, who recently acquired Twitter, to carry out a threat assessment at the social media company to better protect US users' data. This follows up on the concerns raised by the reporter.

Hacker Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, a Twitter whistleblower who served as Twitter's security chief until his sacking in January, testified in September that some Twitter employees were concerned the Chinese government would be able to collect data about users of the microblogging platform.

In a letter to Musk dated Tuesday, November 22, and released Wednesday, November 23, Grassley, the top Senate Republican on the US Judiciary Committee, asked Twitter to conduct a threat assessment "to Twitter's current security posture and systems to protect data and better user privacy." He also requested that the committee staff be briefed on the findings.

"Twitter collects vast amounts of data about Americans. Americans have a stake in ensuring that their personal data is secure, and that the companies they own are entrusted with their personal data have not been compromised by foreign agents," Grassley wrote, as quoted by Reuters.

Twitter itself did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the media on the report.

Zatko once testified that foreign agents could use malware to steal Twitter users' personal information, and use it to gain access to sensitive data on that person's phone. These are some of the dangers that exist on Twitter today.

The correspondence reiterates some of the concerns raised in an earlier letter sent by Grassley and Senate Democrat Dick Durbin last September to Twitter's former chief executive, Parag Agrawal, who led the company until October, when Musk took over in a $44 billion US dollar deal.

According to Grassley, Agrawal did not respond to the letter, citing it was still in litigation with Musk.