Twitter’s ex-head of security, said he deleted 100 computer files and burned 10 handwritten notes at the request.
Elon Musk claims that Twitter Inc. officials gave whistle-blower instructions to destroy evidence of their mistakes as part of a $7.8 million severance package at issue in a legal dispute over the businessman's attempt to halt a buyout of the social media platform, Twitter.
Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s ex-head of security, said he deleted 100 computer files and burned 10 handwritten notes at the request of business managers as part of a severance agreement. The filings reveal that the books had notes from the whistle-meeting blower's with business associates during his one-year tenure as security chief.
Zatko has been the focus of Musk's claims that Twitter misled him about a variety of operational issues at the social media platform, which allowed him to back out of the $44 billion acquisition. The billionaire then changed his mind last week and consented to purchase the company for the initial share price of $54.20.
“Twitter’s attempt to buy Mr. Zatko’s silence failed, but Twitter achieved its secondary aim of ensuring Mr. Zatko’s corroborating evidence would never come to light,” Musk’s lawyers said Monday in an unsealed filing in Twitter’s Delaware suit aimed at forcing Musk to consummate the deal.
Twitter didn't respond right away to Musk's claims in the filing.
Last week, Delaware Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick put the case on hold and gave Musk and Twitter until October 28 to finalise their agreement. Musk's attorneys are requesting that McCormick punish Twitter's lawyers for having destroyed potential case-related evidence.
Zatko created a stir in Washington when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that Twitter’s lax approach to computer security threatened US national security.
Twitter has said it fired Zatko in January for poor performance and said he gave “a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
Zatko claims that he warned Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal of significant privacy and computer security concerns related to the social media platform's operations that amounted to violations of agreements the company had made with government regulators. Additionally, he claimed that his Twitter coworkers had little interest in investigating the matter of how many spam and robot accounts were among the more than 230 million customers of the company.
Twitter’s top lawyers Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett, and Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran, along with Agrawal are being accused by Elon Musk’s lawyers of seeking to cover up the violations of the legal settlements by ordering Zatko to destroy his documents.
The document-destruction order deprived Musk’s legal team of “critical corroborating evidence of Mr. Zatko’s allegations, which would support his account of key meetings and conversations relevant to this case,” according to the unsealed filing.
Twitter, meanwhile, expressed dissatisfaction in its own unsealed document that Jared Birchall, Musk's top aide, failed to arrive at his pre-trial deposition in the case on September 21 prepared to answer inquiries about a variety of transaction-related issues.
“Throughout the deposition, Birchall unequivocally conceded both his lack of knowledge and his lack of preparation -- on topic after topic,” Twitter’s legal team said in the filing.
The legal team for Twitter claimed Birchall who oversees Musk’s office had little to no knowledge of his communications with government regulators regarding the deal, the hiring of data scientists to examine the number of spam or robot accounts ingrained in Twitter's user base, or the Musk side's efforts to find pertinent messages about the deal.
A spokesman for Musk’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Twitter’s complaints about Birchall’s deposition performance.
The case is Twitter v. Musk, 22-0613, Delaware Chancery Court.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
 "Representational Image")
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}