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0 A spokesperson told CNN that “Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance.” The spokesperson also said, “What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
This latest whistleblower report makes clear that social media platforms not only pose potential privacy risks to users, but also national security risks. Congress needs to urgently pass a law regulating what data social networks can collect, how they can share it, how they can store it, who can access it and under what circumstances. Lawmakers also need to give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a specific mandate to closely oversee social media companies’ security and privacy practices. That would ensure that these companies follow any new regulations put in place. We simply can’t trust them to maintain their own data collection and sharing and security standards.
Consider the ramifications of a social media company’s inadequate security protocols. If a company lacks proper safeguards to protect user passwords or employees’ accounts, the accounts of legitimate sources such as high-profile people could be taken over and used to issue dangerous, even deadly, claims or directives.
Further, if a company lacks protections against how many employees have access to user information and safeguards to ensure that employees and users aren’t hacked, then hackers — or even employees — could gather sensitive information about users from their social media data and share it with foreign intelligence agencies. Gaining access to their passwords or private messages can reveal evidence of things like affairs or abortions that bad actors can use to try to blackmail them into spying.
That’s why it’s critical for social networks to limit access to sensitive user information, store and share as little user data as possible, and take every possible measure to prevent hacks. Zatko’s allegations suggest, at least at Twitter, this simply isn’t happening.
Such threats are too serious to leave to social media companies to manage on their own. We need legislation that strictly limits the number of employees who can have access to user data, prohibits the sharing of that data with third parties, and requires companies to take stronger measures to guard against hackings.
Congress needs to step in urgently to help protect social media users — and the country — from the possibility of these kinds of breaches.
