Musk court document: Twitter whistleblower had to destroy evidence

The whistleblower who exposed abuses at Twitter this summer had to destroy evidence when he was fired, according to Elon Musk’s team of lawyers. Musk is involved in a lawsuit with Twitter over the planned purchase of the social media company.

It concerns ten paper notebooks and a hundred digital files, Musk’s lawyers claim in a court document that Bloomberg has seen. Twitter is said to have negotiated with the whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, that he would destroy the booklets and files in order to claim a golden handshake. Zatko, also known as Mudge, was Twitter’s head of security and was fired in January. He received 7.8 million dollars.

Since then, he has exposed abuses on Twitter. Zatko says he notified Twitter’s executives of the security vulnerabilities while working at the platform, but nothing was done with those reports. The company is said to run outdated software on servers, succumb to government influence and “place user growth above anti-spam.” According to him, the company would not comply with the settlement requirements that Twitter was imposed in 2011 by the American FTC after a major security breach. Under that settlement, Twitter had to implement certain security measures, including so that employees have less access to account information. According to the whistleblower, that has not been properly arranged; According to Zatko, Twitter does not comply with that settlement despite the promises.

Musk and Twitter are in a lawsuit over the sale of Twitter to Musk for $44 billion. Musk and Twitter reached a deal in the spring, but Musk changed his mind and wanted to get out of the bargain by arguing that Twitter has far more bots than the company claimed. Twitter therefore took Musk to court to keep him up for sale. Last week, Musk said he wanted to continue the sale and that is why the lawsuit was adjourned for 2.5 weeks, in order to give the opportunity to complete the sale.