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Matt Beebe Profile picture
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Dec 11 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
Hey @elonmusk will you release ex-Twitter security chief Peiter "Mudge" Zatko from his confidentiality agreement? He was clearly right about everything in his whistle blower complaint. How did his hiring in late '20 intersect w/ everything else?
washingtonpost.com/technology/int…
What really transpired during Mudge's tenure at Twitter, from hiring -- driven in response to the "largest hack of a social media platform in history" in July 2020 by teenagers simply asking users for passwords and going from there, to his subsequent firing is an untold story.
And it would be great to better understand to what extent Parag's tremendous ego, propensity to shade the truth, and personal responsibility for technical failures (as former CTO) played in setting the stage for the events that transpired up to the 2020 and beyond.
As an aside, it's extremely easy to see how @elonmusk was able to fire a huge % of Twitter staff & have zero negative impact -- most of them didn't know what they were doing. Twitter was a hot-mess internally due to Jack's increasing disengagement and Parag's unparalleled hubris.
Zatko's report & my excerpts contextualize the culture at Twitter & shed some light on mgmt failures; similarly, the #TwitterFiles releases show the extent to which ideologues abused trust and amassed power.
But the question remains - who really had access to what? Let's explore:
Wait, what?!??! Over-broad permissions to access sensitive areas, no auditing, and effectively ZERO controls around user privacy and data security. Mind blowing.
Don't worry though, we're trustworthy... don't worry, it was just a small number of privileged users...
Oh? REALLY?!?? "Twitter employees were repeatedly found to be intentionally installing spyware on their work computers AT THE REQUEST OF EXTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS" AYFKM??
"...multiple episodes suggesting that Twitter had been penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies and/or was complicit in threats to democratic governance"
This. This takes the cake though:
So yeah.. the question remains: who had access to what? And maybe even more essential: why?
Coda: I first met @dotMudge ~22 yrs ago when still in USAF. Always a fan & I deeply respect him; he even gave me a L0pht T-shirt "back in the day" & I suspect he still has the unit challenge coin I gave him.
~when he hired on at Twitter he blocked me😢🤔

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More from @TheMattBeebe

Matt Beebe Profile picture
Dec 9
In Sep 2019 I became an occasional contributor to @FDRLST w/ some original reporting about the corrupt ICIG that led to the first impeachment; @dbongino and others RT'd me (Dan even amplified a key tweet thread on his show). Engagement & reach spiked, then immediately dropped 1/
The spike & drop isn't unusual per se (flashes in the pan aren't uncommon), but I had half the followers then - apart from the occasional RT from followers with large accounts that breakthrough, reach has been horrendous since. The change over the 2 months is noticeable 2/
Follower-count has been steadily increasing over the past 2 wks, where it had been flat for well over a year. I don't know if it was guilt by association with guys like @dbongino or @seanmdav, or just being a conservative contributing to @fdrlst - but it was real. I seen't it! 3/
Read 4 tweets
Matt Beebe Profile picture
Sep 21
Been mulling this over… if POTUS has unilateral authority to declass which is constitutionally derived (I think we agree on that part @ProfMJCleveland) & he has unilateral authority to set the process for doing so, then isn’t the Q of whether he “sufficiently” declass’d it 1/
a constitutional question (if it’s a question at all & not self-proving by his possession), and not one that should be decided by a special master appointed by a district judge in an ancillary suit related to magistrate’s grant of an overly broad general warrant? 2/2
If he had a copy of them from his time as President in an unclassified environment I’d be absolutely convinced that he had done so. It’s a self-perfecting action for POTUS (and arguably VPOTUS)
Read 4 tweets
Matt Beebe Profile picture
Sep 17
Also avoid making false assertions in your 1st sentence; if they were "its own … records" they wouldn't have had to go get them, now would they? tbh, the entire case comes down to this question tho: are they the current Executive Branch's records or Trump's presidential records?
this is really just not true either... if they are "Presidential Records" they are not "government property" (in the sense that they belong to the current Executive Branch). Their case for the purportedly classified documents keeps withering away
whoo boy... they keep digging.. (1) documents in NARA's "custody" implies custodianship, not ownership; (2) his "obligation" to deposit them with NARA has no timeline (or sanctions for noncompliance); (3) he can call them personal records & none of their arguments hold ANY water
Read 9 tweets
Matt Beebe Profile picture
Sep 7
"hold fire until we have more facts" is good advice, but a pretty ironic admonishment given the conclusion jumping and factual assertions @TPCarney was making last week. 🤷‍♂️

Like when he said this:
1/
And elaborated on how Trump kept records "he shouldn't have" -- which is a great big assumption:
2/
Here's the real story: Trump was "custodian" of those records, and REMAINS "custodian" of those records until such time as he hands them over to NARA or determines -- in his sole judgement -- that they're personal records.
3/
Read 8 tweets
Matt Beebe Profile picture
Sep 1
BREAKING: Apparently there were other classified documents at Mar-A-Lago that the FBI didn’t want acknowledged… it’s pretty damning stuff! a cache of documents relating to the FBI’s intellectual & legal basis for the entire Russia investigation was found behind this cover sheet:
They also found a copy of the Congressional Republican’s “comprehensive plan to respond to the abuses of government power during the Trump presidency & reign in the deep state”— it was classified as follows:
They also found a very large binder entitled “summarizing the government’s response to the COVID pandemic, with a particular focus on non-pharmaceutical interventions at all levels of government” had a separate annex entitled “protecting school kids” — it was marked as follows:
Read 4 tweets
Matt Beebe Profile picture
Aug 14
Remember back on 8/30/19 when then President Trump tweeted out overhead imagery to own the Ayatollah’s? I was critical then & have always thought he was sloppy with classified 1/4
But other than some grumbling on Twitter, the criticism didn’t go anywhere. Then there was that crap about him telling the Ambassador stuff. None of it went anywhere. Why?

It’s universally acknowledged POTUS has the unilateral authority to declassify. 2/4
So when you support the FBI barging in and taking stuff from a former President under the false claim that it’s classified, the onus is on you to explain why the power of the sword should be wielded over a bureaucrat’s specious claim and hurt feelings about some paperwork. 3/4
Read 4 tweets

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