Elon Musk Is A Risk To Twitter, Causing His Privacy And Security Teams To Quit

Twitter Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty and Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran resigned, leaving the company's privacy and security team in disarray after Elon Musk's changes to the service bypassed the company's usual data governance procedures.

Kissner confirmed her departure via tweet.

Later on Thursday, Twitter's Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and Client Solutions Leader Robin Wheeler also resigned.

What’s The Issue? It seems that Tesla Inc TSLA is the issue, with an attorney on Twitter’s privacy team saying that all Musk cares about [right now] is monetizing active Twitter users.

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“Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. I do not believe he cares about the human rights activists, the dissidents, our users in un-monetizable regions, and all the other users who have made Twitter the global town square you have all spent so long building, and we all love,” the attorney wrote on Twitter’s Slack, obtained by the Verge.

The FTC settlement Twitter entered into in May after being discovered utilizing sensitive user information to target advertisements is the second problem.

If Twitter doesn't abide by that agreement, the FTC has the authority to levy fines that might total billions of dollars.

The letter continued stating that the lawyer had “heard Alex Spiro (current head of Legal) say that Elon is willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, because ‘Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC.’”

Engineers are reportedly being asked to "self-certify" compliance with FTC regulations and other privacy laws by Musk's new legal department.

“I anticipate that all of you will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents,” the lawyer wrote in the message.

Benzinga's Take: Musk's casual attitude toward regulatory agencies such as the FTC and SEC, which had fined him in the past, could result in billions of dollars in fines for his newly acquired company, which could force the Tesla CEO to sell more company stock to cover any unforeseen fines — something Musk has previously indicated he wouldn't do.

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Editors Note: Story was updated to add the resignations of Yoel Roth and Robin Wheeler.