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Just days after Twitter fired thousands of employees, a number of top executives from teams working on privacy and security on the platform have reportedly resigned.
Twitter’s chief information security officer announced their resignation on Thursday, vacating one of the company’s most critical functions just as investigations into the future of Twitter and the erratic decisions of its new owner, Elon Musk, mount.
In a tweet, Lea Kissner, the former CISO, said they were looking forward to figuring out their next steps.
“I made the difficult decision to leave Twitter,” Kissner tweeted. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with great people and I’m so proud of the privacy, security and IT teams and the work we’ve done.”
Kissner did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor have they publicly disclosed their reasons for leaving Twitter.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of integrity and security, also resigned from the company on Thursday, according to the Washington Post. In the days following Musk’s acquisition of the company, Roth emerged as a public voice explaining and defending some of the many changes that were made. He joined Musk on a Twitter Spaces discussion Wednesday to allay concerns about the platform’s handling of malicious content during the changes.
Their resignation is the latest example of the internal turmoil that has turned Twitter on its head following massive layoffs at the company.
Kissner’s departure reportedly coincided with the resignation of several other top Twitter leaders Wednesday night over fears of the company’s legal exposure to the Federal Trade Commission, according to an internal Slack report viewed by DailyExpertNews. According to the Slack post, Twitter privacy chief Damien Kieran resigned Wednesday night. Kieran posted a tweet on Thursday night, that seemed to refer to his own resignation. The independent journalist Casey Newton and The Verge first reported the resignation.
In the Slack post, a Twitter employee wrote that Musk’s sole priority is “to recoup the losses he incurs as a result of failing to meet his binding obligation to buy Twitter.”
The employee’s post also claimed that Musk’s focus on monetizing the platform could endanger vulnerable users, including human rights activists and political dissidents.
It could even put Twitter’s own employees at legal risk, the post suggested, after the employee claimed Musk was not concerned about Twitter’s potential liability to the FTC.
The employee claimed to have heard Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney and, according to the report, the new head of Twitter’s legal department, saying: “Elon is launching missiles into space, he is not afraid of the FTC.”
Spiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, an FTC spokesperson said it is “following recent developments on Twitter with great concern.”
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we’re ready to use them.”
Twitter has twice settled with that agency over user privacy violations and is facing whistleblower allegations from former chief security officer Peiter “Mudge” Zatko that the company under former CEO Parag Agrawal has broken its FTC obligations. violated for the third time. If proven true, Zatko’s allegations could result in billions of dollars in fines and personal liability for Agrawal.
The post outlined plans on Twitter to transfer FTC compliance responsibilities to the individual employees who remain with the company.
“This poses a huge personal, professional and legal risk to engineers,” the report warned, according to The Verge. “I expect you all will [sic] pressured by management to make changes that are likely to lead to major incidents.”