Senior members of Twitter’s privacy and security teams have left the company, according to an internal company message obtained by ABC News.
They included Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran, Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty and Chief Information Officer Lea Kissner, according to the message. Kissner confirmed her resignation in a Tweet this morning. Neither has responded to ABC’s request for comment.
The message was posted on Twitter’s Slack by a lawyer from Twitter’s privacy team and visible to all staff. “Over the past two weeks, Elon has shown that he only cares about recovering the losses he incurs as a result of failing to meet his binding obligation to purchase Twitter,” the attorney wrote to his co-workers. The Verge first reported on the lawyer’s message.
The Twitter lawyer’s message comes after Musk announced he would require employees to be in the office 40 hours a week, eliminating remote work. The lawyer believes this is a “fundamental change to our employment contracts,” they wrote to the Slack group of more than 2,000 members. “Personally, I don’t think Twitter employees have an obligation to return to the office. Certainly not unannounced,” the attorney wrote.
In this file photo taken on October 28, 2022, the Twitter sign is seen at its headquarters in San Francisco.
Constanza Hevia/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
“He chose to enter into that deal,” Twitter’s lawyer added of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. “All of us are going through this as a result of the decisions he made.”
The Twitter attorney reminded co-workers that they still have unlimited PTO. “Perhaps today is a good day to rest and recharge,” they wrote.
This Twitter top council member went on to describe Musk’s apparent disregard for any possible legal repercussions that might present themselves in the near future.
In the message, the attorney mentioned the FTC settlement that Twitter agreed to in May; the company was caught using phone numbers and emails for targeted advertising, even though they were only supposed to be used for multi-factor authentication logins. The FTC fined the company $150 million and provided Twitter with a list of new compliance rules.
If the company refuses to comply with the FTC settlement, Twitter could be fined billions of dollars, according to the company’s lawyer’s Slack message.
But the lawyer states in the message that they heard Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney and current head of Twitter’s legal department, say “that Elon is willing to take a great deal of risk in relation to this company and its users, because ‘Elon It puts rockets into space, it’s not afraid of the FTC.'”
Twitter’s legal team is asking engineers to “self-certify” compliance with FTC regulations and other privacy laws, according to the message from the company’s attorney. “This will pose a great deal of personal, professional, and legal risk to engineers,” they wrote. “I anticipate that all of you will be pressured by management to push for changes that will likely lead to major incidents.”
An FTC spokesperson told ABC News that “we are following recent developments on Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order It gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we’re prepared to use them.”
Twitter’s lawyer left the Twitter ethics helpline number and a link to https://whistlebloweraid.org/ at the bottom of the email.
“It has been an honor working with all of you,” they wrote. “I’m taking a PTO day today.”
Twitter has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.