News article 1

Whistleblower Says Indian Government 'Agent' Was Placed in Twitter to Gauge

Company's Plans

By: The Wire Staff

September 13, 2022

New Delhi: In his testimony to the US Senate, whistleblower Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko on
Tuesday disclosed that the person he believed with high confidence was a ‘foreign agent’ of
India was placed in Twitter to see if the company was willing to concede to the BJP
government’s demands for censorship and better understand its plans.

In a damning testimony, Twitter’s former security chief said that the company ignored its
engineers because their “executive incentives led them to prioritise profit over security.”
Zatko said Twitter’s security systems are outdated and that it runs vulnerable software on
more than half of its data centre servers. He said that the platform was breached by foreign
intelligence agencies multiple times.

In an explosive complaint  filed last month, Zatko alleged that the Indian government forced
Twitter to hire an individual who was a “government agent” and likely had access to sensitive
user data as part of their job.

“The Indian government forced Twitter to hire specific individual(s) who were government
agents, who (because of Twitter’s basic architectural flaws) would have access to vast
amounts of Twitter sensitive data,” the complaint said. “By knowingly permitting an Indian
government agent direct unsupervised access to the company’s systems and user data, Twitter
executives violated the company’s commitments to its users”.

He expounded on these allegations before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday,

revealing that Twitter was forced to hire  two government agents by India. Zatko told the
Senate that he believed the Indian agent tried to glean Twitter’s legal strategy as the company
tried to resist the government’s order to ban several accounts, including those of dissenters,
opposition party members and protesters.

Responding to questions on the information that foreign governments could access through
‘agents’, Zatko said that Twitter did not have the ability to internally identify people who
were inappropriately accessing data. Only an outside agency alerting Twitter could’ve let the
company know that an ‘agent existed’, Zatko said. “They simply lacked the fundamental
abilities to hunt for foreign intelligence agencies and expel them on their own,” he said.
Zatko, popularly known as Mudge, said that when he approached an executive about the
person he believed was an Indian agent working at the company, the executive told him “since
there was already one suspected foreign agent at the company, what did it matter if there are
more?”.

When Zatko approached an executive about his concern that he believed an agent of the
Indian government was working at the company, the executive allegedly told him that since
there was already one suspected foreign agent at the company, what did it matter if there are
more?

— Lauren Feiner (@lauren_feiner) September 13, 2022

He added that the Indian ‘agent’ was not an engineer.

Zatko said, “The company’s cybersecurity failures make it vulnerable to exploitation, causing
real harm to real people.” He outlined two major problems that Twitter had: that the company
does not know what data it actually has; and that employees have access to too much data.

Zatko says Twitter has two main problems

1) The company doesn’t know what data it actually has
2) Employees have too much access to data.

“It’s not far fetched to say that employees inside the company could take over the accounts of
all of the senators in this room,”

— Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) September 13, 2022

“I am here today because Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators
and even its own board of directors,” Zatko said in his opening remarks.

He said he was risking his career and reputation to warn the US government about Twitter’s
poor security practices.

According to the news agency Associated Press, many of Zatko’s claims are “uncorroborated
and appear to have little documentary support”. Twitter has denied Zatko’s claims, calling his
description of events “a false narrative … riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies” and
lacking important context.

His allegations that Twitter was doing little to tackle the problem of bots could have a
domino effect on billionaire Elon Musk’s attempt to back out of his $44 billion deal to
buy the company. Musk and Twitter are locked in a legal battle after the latter sued the
Tesla owner in a bid to force him to complete the deal.
Zatko, 51, first gained prominence in the 1990s as a pioneer in the ethical hacking movement
and later worked in senior positions at an elite Defense Department research unit and at
Google. He joined Twitter in late 2020 and was fired earlier this year.

https://thewire.in/tech/twitter-whistleblower-peiter-zatko-indian-government-agent

News article 2

Meta disbands its 'Responsible Innovation' team responsible for ensuring Facebook products
are ethical - weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned 'many teams are going to shrink' as
the company tries to cut costs

By KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 00:05 BST, 9 September 2022 | UPDATED: 03:44 BST, 9 September 2022

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has disbanded the Responsible Innovation team
responsible for policing ethical concerns about its products, as the company and other tech giants
slash costs amid weak growth.
The team consisted of roughly two dozen engineers, ethicists, and others who collaborated with
product teams across the company to review potential concerns about products and features, but is
being split up, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday
Most of those employees will be reassigned to other teams within the company, though their jobs
are not guaranteed, a company spokesman said.

A Meta spokesman told DailyMail.com that the company's commitment to responsible product
design had not waned, saying in a statement: 'This work is more of a priority than ever, not less.' 

'We are scaling it by deploying dedicated teams of experts into priority product areas and have
more people working on responsible innovation within product teams than two years ago,' the
statement added.

'That's why the overwhelming majority of former members of this team are continuing with this
kind of work elsewhere at Meta.' 

It comes as a number of tech companies, including Uber, Alphabet, Apple, and Twitter have scaled
back hiring and dumped contractor positions - while others, like Netflix, have laid off full-time
staff. 
Meta's Responsible Innovation team had been led by Vice President Margaret Gould Stewart.

In June 2021, Stewart wrote in a company blog post that the team was created to 'help product
teams identify potential harms across a broad spectrum of societal issues and dilemmas.'
'We create standards, tools, and guidance for responsible innovation practices across our apps and
services,' she added.
The shake-up comes as Meta and other Silicon Valley giants chase cost cuts as inflation and
weakening ad sales hamper growth and cut into profits.

In late July, after Meta reported profits shrank 36 percent from a year ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg
warned investors on a conference call: 'Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to
other areas.'

Zuckerberg has also recently said he will weed out underperforming employees with 'aggressive
performance reviews' as the company braces for a deep economic turndown. 

Last month, Meta laid off a group of 60 contractors who were reported to be selected at random by
an algorithm.

The contractors were employed via Accenture in their Austin office, a company that has a deal
worth nearly half a billion dollars a year to staff up the company with workers in content
moderation and business integrity. 

The layoffs were announced during a video conference call Tuesday and they were not
immediately offered new jobs or transfers by Accenture, according to Business Insider. 
And earlier in the summer, Meta reorganized its entire AI team, including folding the Responsible
AI group into its Social Impact team.

Meta is not the only tech giant to warn of cost cuts and hint at potential layoffs. 

Earlier this week, Alphabet's CEO hinted at possible job cuts because he wants the company to
become '20 percent more efficient' after years of rapid hiring. 

Sundar Pichai, 50, spoke at Code Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, where he said he
wants to make the tech giant, which owns Google, more efficient due to economic uncertainty
caused by decades-high inflation and a slowdown in ad spending, according to CNBC. 
In July, Alphabet said in a regulatory filing that it will slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the
year due to decades-high inflation. 

On Tuesday, Pichai also told the conference that the company has become 'slower' in productivity
after hiring ballooned in the past five years, and that one way to make it more efficient was to
merge competing products, like YouTube Music and Google Play Music. 

In August, Apple laid off many of its contract-based recruiters after warning that it would slow
hiring and rein in spending.

Apple let go about 100 contractors responsible for vetting and hiring new employees, people
familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
In July, Apple reportedly warned staff of plans to slow hiring and spending growth next year in
some divisions.

In May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to lay off 10 percent of its salaried staff, saying he
had 'a super bad feeling about the economy.'
Netflix, which has struggled with two consecutive quarters of net subscriber losses, cut its
headcount by 150 in May and another 300 in June.

Google parent Alphabet also said last month it would slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the
year.

Amazon is reportedly thinning the ranks of its hourly employees through attrition, and recently
paused the construction of six new office buildings in Bellevue and Nashville.