Musk’s lawyer tells Twitter workers they will not be liable if firm violates FTC consent decree • TechCrunch

Following a warning shot from the FTC to Twitter yesterday, TechCrunch has obtained an inner e mail despatched by Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, to all remaining workers — wherein he seeks to calm staffers’ considerations by claiming that they don’t have particular person legal responsibility for upholding the necessities of the FTC consent decree.

We’ve reproduced the complete textual content of the e-mail (sic) beneath — which was despatched by Spiro to Twitter workers at 5:21PM, November 10:

Elon – questions have arisen right this moment concerning the consent decree in impact on the time you took over the corporate.

We’ve our first upcoming compliance verify with the ftc since taking up and we are going to deal with it.

The one celebration to the decree is Twitter- not people who work at Twitter. It’s Twitter itself (not particular person workers) who is a celebration and subsequently solely Twitter the corporate might be liable.

I perceive that there have been workers at Twitter who don’t even work on the ftc matter commenting that they might to to jail if we weren’t in compliance- that’s merely not how this works. It’s the firm’s obligation. It’s the firm’a burden. It’s the firm’s legal responsibility.

We spoke to the FTC right this moment about our persevering with obligations and have a constructive ongoing dialogue.

We are going to after all stay in compliance with the consent decree and the authorized division is dealing with it and completely happy to reply any questions

Thanks

Alex

The 2011 consent decree required Twitter to ascertain and keep a program to make sure and often report that its new options don’t additional misrepresent “the extent to which it maintains and protects the safety, privateness, confidentiality, or integrity of any nonpublic client info.”

In a notice (first reported by The Verge) posted in Twitter’s inner slack and visual to all workers, a departing inner legal professional mentioned that actually, particular person engineers do engender “private, skilled and authorized danger,” seemingly in contradiction to what Spiro despatched within the above e mail.

On Thursday, key Twitter executives together with the corporate’s Head of Belief and Security Yoel Roth, in addition to its Chief Data Safety Officer Lea Kissner, Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty and Chief Privateness Officer Damien Kieran all abruptly departed the corporate. The FTC famous that they’re watching with “deep concern” the continuing state of affairs at Twitter in mild of the consent decree.

The FTC fined Twitter $150 million earlier this yr after discovering a breach of the settlement associated to person information offered for safety functions getting used for advert focusing on.

We’ve reached out to the FTC for clarification concerning the consent decree and particular person worker legal responsibility and can replace if we obtain extra info.