Twitter employed Indian and Chinese government agents, alleges whistleblower testifying before US State Congress

From an ad ban in Turkey to being blocked in China, social media platform Twitter is no stranger to being caught in political crosshairs. But visuals of police raiding its Gurgaon office for labeling a BJP leader’s tweet as ‘manipulated media’, highlighted how far authorities were willing to go. Over a year after that raid, a whistleblower and Twitter’s former security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko alleged that the Indian state had forced the firm to hire a government agent.

Now Zatko has revealed that intelligence agents from both India and China had been working at Twitter, and had access to sensitive data due to the company’s weak security. In his testimony to the US State Congress, Zatko also accused the social media site of grossly negligent security practices, adding that a US government source had warned it about the infiltrators among its employees. The former security lead also said that Twitter lacked the ability to detect foreign agents and expel them on its own.

Pro-democracy dissidents at risk?

Zatko’s allegations were backed up by US Senator Chuck Grassley in his opening speech, where he brought up the indictment of two Twitter employees paid by Saudi Arabia for information on political dissidents. A member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley added that governments can use sensitive data acquired by agents to hunt down pro-democracy activists or spy on Americans.

A hub for Chinese government ads

Apart from trouble with India’s ruling party, Twitter has also been barred for more than a billion Chinese netizens who use Sina Weibo instead. But it is noteworthy that despite the ban, propaganda offices of the Chinese Communist Party and local authorities have been spending heavily for global ad spots on Twitter.

Budget documents and government tenders reviewed by Reuters indicated that ads pitching China’s tourist destinations and economic achievements went to Twitter. On the other hand it’s among social media platforms that have banned political ads altogether after scrutiny over 2016 US Presidential polls.

As for Zatko’s allegations, Twitter had earlier called it a false narrative, which is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”