We’ve been hearing a lot from the release of the Twitter files, mostly focused on the suppression of conservatives or views which didn’t match the liberal narrative. Elon Musk is promising more to come including pertaining to COVID and that’s driving some on the left wild.

But there’s more that’s now coming out from a whistleblower report from Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who used to be in charge of Twitter security about what a mess it was before Musk took over. It’s kind of hilarious that the left is talking about Musk supposedly destroying Twitter when you look at what was going on before he took over. Yet they didn’t have an issue with that, they have an issue with Musk trying to clean things up.

I wrote about the report back in August and there were some bombshell things in it.

According to the former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, thousands of employees — almost half the workforce — have access to the platform’s central controls and the most sensitive information on users without adequate oversight. The report notes that one or more current employees may even be working for foreign intelligence.

Zatko also laid out in the report how Twitter operatives had made false and misleading statements to the FTC about the problems.

Zatko was let go from Twitter after he brought the problems to the attention of the higher-ups. But not only did he make allegations contained in the report, but he also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.

"It's not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room."

Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko testifies before Congress about the social media giant's security gaps https://t.co/nsn59X5A4J pic.twitter.com/NgeqVjaUU9

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) September 13, 2022

“It’s not far-fetched to say that an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room,” Zatko declared, outlining the great concerns to national security that existed.

What was the response of the higher-ups to the danger Zatko brought to them about there already a foreign agent at Twitter? It was incredible.

Former Twitter security executive Peiter "Mudge" Zatko says that he broached the topic of a foreign asset working at Twitter to another executive, who brushed off Mr. Zatko's concern. pic.twitter.com/8lAbsXPPMB

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 13, 2022

“Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more? Let’s keep growing the office.” they unbelievably told Zatko.

But there were still more interesting things in the report, given the release of the Twitter files. This Twitter thread from Avid Halaby broke down some of the highlights.

They didn’t monitor employees’ computers so the employees were installing all kinds of spyware onto their computers.

Twitter didn’t monitor employee computers at all, it was not uncommon for employees to install spyware on work devices pic.twitter.com/I2po3Ddr5Q

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

Most of the employees had access to things they shouldn’t have had access to (and could have undermined).

Twitter does not have separate development, test, staging, and production environments. At least 5,000 employees had privileged access to production systems. pic.twitter.com/rEBJtaOm9Q

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

They had all kinds of security incidents that they weren’t being straight about.

In 2020, Twitter had security incidents serious enough they had to be reported to the federal government on an almost weekly basis. Meanwhile, Parag Agarwal was lying about how secure Twitter was. pic.twitter.com/8oF4WAQTg1

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

Zatko said it wasn’t possible for Twitter to secure his production environment and that a data center failure could potentially cause the permanent loss of all of Twitter’s data. He was told not to put that in writing.

A few months later, that exact eventuality almost came true, and only herculean effort by Twitter engineers prevented “permanent, irreparable failure.” pic.twitter.com/yGbXpXwNrD

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

Zatko explained that they had no software development lifecycle and they’d misled the FTC on that.

Twitter had no software development lifecycle, and misled both the FTC and its Board about this fact for a decade. pic.twitter.com/7AElFxBaZj

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

Mudge informed Agrawal that there were thousands of failed login attempts to Twitter’s engineering system every day. Agrawal did nothing. pic.twitter.com/mLj1etuuEh

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

“Every new employee has access to data they do not need to have access to.” pic.twitter.com/qpafM3l8Ho

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

The part about the foreign infiltration was perhaps the most concerning, particularly if you combine that with what Zatko testified about employees being able to take over the accounts of senators.

Twitter knowingly allowed itself to be infiltrated by, or otherwise a tool of, many governments. pic.twitter.com/E3IKtwaPKC

— Avid Halaby (@AvidHalaby) December 12, 2022

Not only did that risk all kinds of exposure of information, but it also endangered dissidents who were using Twitter to try to speak out against governments. The report notes that there was a proposal from Parag Agrawal that they concede to Russia’s demands for censorship and surveillance to grow Twitter in Russia. That didn’t end up happening, but I wonder what the leftist Ukraine boosters think of this Twitter that they were defending.

According to Zatko, Agrawal was not straight with the board. So he, Zatko, began preparing a report on all the issues, and it was then that he was fired.

Bottom line? This platform was a mess before Musk with all kinds of national security concerns. This is what the left should have been objecting to, not Musk wanting to bring more transparency and free speech. It was suffering from lying and lack of transparency for too long. Everyone should have cheered finally having a hands-on boss willing to try to clean it all up.