In June, Twitter agreed to pay about $7 million to its former security chief, Peiter Zatko, whose whistleblower allegations are included in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company.
Zatko, who is scheduled to meet with the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee on September 13 to discuss the allegations against Twitter, had agreed to a $7 million settlement with Twitter days before filing his whistleblower complaint in July.
Zatko also agreed to a nondisclosure agreement that prohibits him from publicly discussing his time at Twitter or denigrating the company alongside the $7 million, an agreement that he appears to have violated. The settlement was tied to Zatko’s lost compensation and came about after months of negotiations over potentially tens of millions of dollars.
Zatko, who was fired from Twitter in January, accused the social media company of making false claims about its security plan and misleading statements about its defense against hackers and spam accounts. This claim strengthens Elon Musk’s legal battle with Twitter over his offer to buy the company for $44 billion, which he dropped after the social media company misinformed him about the total number of bots and fake accounts on Twitter.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.