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Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealed in an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Monday night that the US and foreign government agencies were given "full access" to direct messages of private citizens on the platform before he bought the company.
Musk told Carlson, "The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind. I was not aware of that."
"Would that include people’s DMs?" Carlson asked Musk.
"Yes. Because the DM's aren't encrypted," Musk answered.
Musk told Carlson he is working to create a tool that would give users the option of encrypting direct messages and hopes to reveal the new feature later this month so that no government and "no one at Twitter can see what you're talking about.”
He added, "You could put a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you. That's how it should be."
Carlson noted that the new encryption feature would give "the finger" to US and foreign intelligence agencies that have relied on the platform to gather intelligence.
Musk claimed that he has already received "indirect complaints" from agencies about the crackdown adding, “I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I tweet about it."
"If I got something that was unconstitutional from the US government, my reply would be to send them a copy of the First Amendment and just say, 'What part of this are we getting wrong?’"
Musk continued, "Since I’ve been a heavy Twitter user since 2009, it’s sort of like I’m in ‘The Matrix.’ I can see things, do things feel right, or do they not feel right, what tweets am I being shown as recommended?… I started to get more and more uneasy about the Twitter situation. I started to feel like something feels wrong… I couldn’t place it exactly.”
"Just, it felt like it was drifting in a bad direction and my conversations with the board and management seemed to confirm my intuition about that, basically. But I was convinced these guys do not care about fixing Twitter and I had a bad feeling about where it was headed based on the conversations I had with them. So then I was like, you know what, I’ll try acquiring it and see if acquiring it is possible," he added.
Musk told Carlson, "The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind. I was not aware of that."
"Would that include people’s DMs?" Carlson asked Musk.
"Yes. Because the DM's aren't encrypted," Musk answered.
Musk told Carlson he is working to create a tool that would give users the option of encrypting direct messages and hopes to reveal the new feature later this month so that no government and "no one at Twitter can see what you're talking about.”
He added, "You could put a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you. That's how it should be."
Carlson noted that the new encryption feature would give "the finger" to US and foreign intelligence agencies that have relied on the platform to gather intelligence.
Musk claimed that he has already received "indirect complaints" from agencies about the crackdown adding, “I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I tweet about it."
"If I got something that was unconstitutional from the US government, my reply would be to send them a copy of the First Amendment and just say, 'What part of this are we getting wrong?’"
Musk continued, "Since I’ve been a heavy Twitter user since 2009, it’s sort of like I’m in ‘The Matrix.’ I can see things, do things feel right, or do they not feel right, what tweets am I being shown as recommended?… I started to get more and more uneasy about the Twitter situation. I started to feel like something feels wrong… I couldn’t place it exactly.”
"Just, it felt like it was drifting in a bad direction and my conversations with the board and management seemed to confirm my intuition about that, basically. But I was convinced these guys do not care about fixing Twitter and I had a bad feeling about where it was headed based on the conversations I had with them. So then I was like, you know what, I’ll try acquiring it and see if acquiring it is possible," he added.
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