Facebook’s Ex-Security Head Says Musk Lied About FBI’s Payments To Twitter For Content Moderation

Elon Musk’s claims that the FBI sent out payments to Twitter for content moderation are being dubbed a lie. The ex-security head of Facebook says there is zero truth in those statements.

The news by Alex Stamos comes after a top journalist shared screenshots from 2021 featuring an email that had Twitter collecting $3 million from a reimbursement initiative for time spent dealing with requests from the FBI. This was an integral part of Musk’s famous Twitter Files that are currently the center of attention.

But despite Musk providing proof of the payments made by the US Government to Twitter for censoring content from the public eye, he’s still being dubbed a liar.

Stamos has gone on to speak about how government agencies have the ability to gain access to stored communications from platforms like Twitter under a famous d-order, which must be signed by the judge. Therefore, firms have the right to ask for reimbursements for any such requests and that is exactly what Twitter ended up doing.

This law goes on to detail that any agency like the FBI can request information legally to conduct an investigation. The payments made in the form of reimbursements cover expenses and are necessary. They’ve been incurred directly to conduct searches, carry out assembly, reproduce, and even provide more details.

Any other details from such firms may be requested by the government-based firms and include billing details, basic subscribers, sessions, and emails or voice mails too. These guidelines don’t entail demands regarding firms censoring different accounts.

The nature of such requests hasn’t been scrutinized but we did see Twitter lose out on a legal case that it filed in 2012 against the American government to have details about an account called Occupy Wall St. He was a protester being charged with disorderly conduct.

In more recent terms, we saw emails come forward regarding the Twitter Files that featured pushbacks from top executives from Twitter about rejecting certain requests made. This entails one instance where the firm’s Trust and Safety head had blatantly denied giving out account details. He felt the best way to give out details was through a legal process that was legal in the country.

In that particular email, he has also gone about detailing more about Twitter’s policy and how it prohibits the use of certain data products and tools for surveillance and gathering of intelligence.


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