Elon Musk’s first steps after buying Twitter were to eliminate the CEO, along with around 3,500 engineers. Inevitably, this led to most of the remaining employees quitting. Now, the first occurrence of resignation happened when the senior leadership of Twitter resigned – executives responsible for security, privacy and compliance management.
Lea Kissner, Apple’s chief information security officer from April 2021 until she revealed her decision to leave on Twitter;
“After seven years, I’ve decided to leave Twitter and take some time off. I’m ready for a change, and dreaming about what’s next,”
Damien Kieran, the Chief Privacy Officer of Twitter, has also resigned. However, he hasn’t made a public statement. He’s been in charge of global data protection at Twitter for the past seven years.
The same source says that Marianne Fogarty, Twitter’s head of compliance, might not be long for the company. She’s been there since 2015. This news comes to us just a few months after Peeter “Mudge” Zatko, the former head of security at Twitter, claimed the company was irresponsibly handling its users’ information. He also claimed that Twitter had allowed some government agents from India and China on its workforce, even though the Justice Department had convicted a Saudi Arabian employee for spying on dissidents.
Twitter, as well as Kissner, Kieran, and Fogarty, did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Journalist Casey Newton first reported the trio had departed and said that an employee had posted about the resignations on Twitter’s Slack. The staffer noted that without that leadership, engineers would have to guarantee they were compliant with FTC regulations on their own. “All of this is extremely dangerous for our users,” the Twitter employee wrote, according to Newton. As the FTC is able to fine Twitter billions for any security or privacy failings that harm users, it would be “extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform. Our users deserve so much better than this.” The message closed out with a link to Whistleblower Aid.
Earlier this year, Twitter was fined $150 million by the FTC after using telephone numbers and emails for targeted advertising. This is despite the fact that they were designated as only being used for multi-factor authentication.
The Slack message went on to say that Elon will be taking on a great deal of risk in this area because “he’s not afraid of the FTC.” They added that they anticipate all employees will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that may lead to high risks.
Twitter has been warned by the FTC after failing to address concerns raised by staff in November and December. The agency’s public affairs director, Douglas Farrar, said this in a statement.
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance and we are prepared to use them.”
In May, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations made by the FTC that it had misused private information to target advertising after telling the user that the information was only collected for security purposes.
In a recent internal memo, Spiro mentions that Elon Musk expressed willingness to take a lot of risk with the company.
“Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC,” the attorney quoted Spiro as saying. Twitter’s buyout has sparked concerns that Musk, who has often waded into political debates, could face pressure from countries trying to control online speech. It prompted US President Joe Biden to say on Wednesday that Musk’s “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.”
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