Twitter whistleblower to testify in Congress over damning security revelations

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The Washington Post reports that Peiter "Mudge" Zatko will testify in Congress next month after he went public with accusations about the social media company's security practices. The privacy and national security concerns raised in Zatko's complaint will be addressed at the hearing.

The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that Mr. Zatko's allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at the social media site raise serious concerns. If the claims are true, they could show dangerous data privacy and security risks for users of the social networking site.

According to the Washington Post, Zatko has had at least three meetings on Capitol Hill.

The European data protection regulators are scrutinizing Zatko's complaint. According to the complaint, if EU regulators had inquired about the security practices of the company, they would have been deceived. Ireland's Data Protection Commission, which leads enforcement of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation forTwitter because of the location of the tech company's EU headquarters, said it had engaged with the company over issues raised in the complaint.

The data watchdog in France is currently investigating claims made in Zatko's complaint, which could result in an order to comply or a sanction if it is found to have violated the law. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation allows fines of up to 4% of a company's global annual turnover if the violation is serious.

A representative from the company did not respond to a request for comment after the hearing was announced. In an internal memo sent after the revelations became public, the CEO of the social media company said the claims were a false narrative that was rife with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

A spokesman for the company told CNN that Mr. Zatko had been fired for poor performance and ineffective leadership. The timing and allegations of Mr. Zatko appear to be designed to hurt the company and its customers.

In a complaint filed with the SEC last month, Zatko made a number of allegations about security at the company. He says the company has violated an agreement it made with the FTC after a pair of security incidents.

If true, the former security chief claims that the approach to measuring the number of bots on its platform is misleading and that less than 5 percent of its monthly users are bots. This figure is important in the ongoing legal battle between Musk and the social media network, after Musk tried to back out of his agreement to buy the company.