David Bridges
What feels like a century ago was only 5 months ago to the day today that Elon Musk offered to purchase Twitter, Inc. for $43 billion. Since then, Twitter’s stock and ultimately underlying value has gone on a roller coaster ride, with nearly 60% price swings and plenty of volatility along the way.
Much of the company’s value has been in flux due to Twitter’s security and bot policies, which first were brought to light when Musk abruptly ended his bid to purchase the company in July. His reasoning was quite simple: Twitter does not have adequate policies in place for controlling and policing its own platform, leading to an inflated number of fake or “bot” accounts in their total user accounts and daily active user figures.
For a social media platform, total accounts and daily active users alongside revenue per user represent some of the most important statistics when it comes to the company’s valuation. Even a technology legend such as Musk can’t turn Twitter around and make money if there aren’t enough users on the platform. This clearly justified Musk’s retreat from the deal, which has sparked a months-long legal battle that may just be beginning.
This context is critical to set the stage for Twitter’s latest issue, which is also receiving front-page news coverage. The company’s former chief security officer, Peiter Zatko, testified before Congress last week in regards to his whistleblower allegations against the company that Twitter has major security flaws, knows of these flaws, and chooses to do little to nothing about them.
Zatko went as far as to share with Congress that the company “prioritized profits over addressing security concerns.” More troubling, these concerns that Zatko speaks of exist both internally as well as externally to the company.
Zatko shared a gut-wrenching piece of testimony with senators from both sides of the aisle, leaving them in awe when he said, “It’s not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company [Twitter] could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room.”
Zatko went on to share that he had serious concerns that spies from foreign adversaries were employed within Twitter, and because of the lax security policies the company has adopted, those spies could potentially take over accounts, gain access to endless amounts of data, or possibly even be doing worse, but of course, the company wouldn’t know because it doesn’t have the proper means to even track or report on this.
Zatko went on to share that the company “doesn’t know what data they have, where it lives or where it came from, so, unsurprisingly, they can’t protect it.”
Twitter has become the visit many of us have taken to grandma’s house, where nearly a century of “stuff” has accumulated, overflowing the cabinets, closets and rooms within the four walls, and no one really knows what is there or what isn’t. The only difference? Unlike the “stuff” at grandma’s house, Twitter’s “stuff” has massive personal, corporate and government data security and privacy concerns.
And the problem with Twitter’s “stuff” is that it is all interconnected, like a complex web of data not only consisting of Tweets and media, but consisting of user information, profile data, personal information such as passwords and security questions, financial data, and frankly data that I can’t even fathom because not even Twitter itself knows it is there.
When you have this complicated web of data that has existed for years and has not been properly cared for, cleaned up, encrypted, stored, deleted or managed, it becomes a nearly impossible feat to properly reorganize it and set things straight.
This is a case, according to Zatko’s testimony, where Twitter is lacking even the basics when it comes to housekeeping and security. Most companies a fraction the size of Twitter have more stringent security and data retention policies, and for this to exist in a company with the size and reach of Twitter, which mind you is also publicly traded, is mind-boggling.
In light of the Musk deal gone south and now testimony from Zatko, many are calling on Congress to act. Twitter entered into a $150 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations it misrepresented how it used information in targeted ads. That $150 million didn’t seem to deter the company from cleaning up its act, so what will?
While $150 million sounds like a massive penalty, to a company with a $30 billion market cap, that penalty is not much different than the average American going out and spending $300 at a steakhouse for a nice birthday dinner. Twitter needs to be shaken to its core. It has reached a point which has been evidenced time and time again by events far beyond those mentioned in this column that the company lacks the ability to be a public town square with the reach and user base that it has amassed over the years.
While I am an advocate of businesses and almost always against more government oversight, Twitter has made the bed for all big technology companies and shown that without the proper laws and regulations in place, Big Tech can run amok and cause wide-reaching security and data concerns for every user and frankly every citizen of this country.
It’s time for our politicians to wake up and take action against these data and security atrocities. Let’s do something before that data makes its way into the wrong hands and it’s too late, if it isn’t too late already.
Brendan Egan is a cybersecurity expert and bestselling author. He is the founder and CEO of Simple SEO Group and serves on the Board of Directors of ERI, the world’s largest hardware cybersecurity and destruction company among other roles in technology and security. He wrote his column for The Dallas Morning News
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