Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s ex-head of security, said he burned 10 handwritten notebooks and deleted 100 computer files at the behest of company managers as part of his separation agreement, according to 3 October court filings that were unsealed on Monday. The books contained notes of the whistle-blower’s meetings with company counterparts during his year-long tenure as security chief, the filings show.
Delaware Chancery Judge Kathaleen St J McCormick put the case on hold and set a deadline of 28 October for Musk and Twitter to complete the deal. Musk’s lawyers are asking McCormick to sanction Twitter’s attorneys for ordering the destruction of potential evidence in the case. Zatko contends he warned Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal about serious computer security issues and privacy concerns tied to the social-media platform’s operations that amounted to violations of settlements the company reached with government regulators. He also said his Twitter colleagues showed little interest in doing a deep dive into the issue of how many spam and robot accounts were included among the company’s more than 230 million users.
Meanwhile, Twitter complained in its own unsealed filing that Jared Birchall – Musk’s top aide – showed up to his pre-trial deposition on 21 September in the case unprepared to answer questions about a host of issues related to the transaction.