Whistleblower tells Congress Twitter 'misleading the public,' cannot protect data

Ex-Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko testified Tuesday to Congress that the social media platform is "misleading" the public and lawmakers and is unable to protect users' data. 

"Twitter leadership ignored its engineers," in part because "their executive incentives led them to prioritize profit over security," Zatko said, the Associated Press reported.

Zatko served as Twitter's head of security until he was fired earlier this year. He filed a whistleblower complaint in July claiming Twitter had "extreme, egregious deficiencies" to prevent hacking.

"Twitter’s misleading the public, lawmakers," he also said Tuesday on Capitol Hill. "They don’t know what data they have, where it lives and where it came from and so, unsurprisingly, they can’t protect it."

Billionaire Elon Musk, who was already attempting to terminate his $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter, cited Zatko's claims in another notice to terminate the deal last month.