After the Federal Trade Commission launched a probe into Twitter over privacy concerns, Twitterโs negotiations with the FTC do not seem to be going very well. Last week, it was revealed that Twitter CEO Elon Muskโs request last year for a meeting with FTC Chair Lina Khan was rebuffed. Now, a senior Twitter lawyer, Christian Dowellโwho was closely involved in those FTC talksโhas resigned, several people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
Dowell joined Twitter in 2020 and rose in the ranks after several of Twitterโs top lawyers exited or were fired once Musk took over the platform in the fall of 2022, Bloomberg reported. Most recently, Dowellโwho has not yet confirmed his resignationโoversaw Twitterโs product legal counsel. In that role, he was โintimately involvedโ in the FTC negotiations, sources told the Times, including coordinating Twitterโs responses to FTC inquiries.
The FTC has overseen Twitterโs privacy practices for more than a decade after it found that the platform failed to safeguard personal information and issued a consent order in 2011. The agency launched its current probe into Twitterโs operations after Musk began mass layoffs that seemed to introduce new security concerns, AP News reported. The Times reported that the FTC's investigation intensified after security executives quit Twitter over concerns that Musk might be violating the FTC's privacy decree.
Surprise! The FBI has been involved in warrantless surveillance! But that's not particularly surprising; we've known that for a while now (even in some pundits like to pretend as if it's absolutely unprecedented when the FBI occasionally stops monitoring Muslims, Black rights, and environmental activists and turns their attention to money laundering networks surrounding right-wing politicians). โ Read the rest
Britta Ederโs list of phone contacts is full of people the German state considers to be criminals. As a defense lawyer in Hamburg, her client list includes anti-fascists, people who campaign against nuclear power, and members of the PKK, a banned militant Kurdish nationalist organization.
For her clientsโ sake, sheโs used to being cautious on the phone. โWhen I talk on the phone I always think, maybe I'm not alone,โ she says. That self-consciousness even extends to phone calls with her mother.