Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of September 23, Beijing time, it is reported that a new turning point has taken place in the "litigation war" between the head of Tesla, Elon Musk and Twitter. The judge said on Thursday that Musk could use the problems with the $7.8 million severance payment paid by Twitter to a whistleblower as a reason for his withdrawal from the $44 billion Twitter deal.

After Twitter sued Musk, Musk quickly filed a counterclaim. On Thursday, Delaware judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, who is in charge of the case, ruled that Musk could amend the counterclaim to add information about Twitter's severance payment to whistleblower Peiter Zatko.

Musk alleges that Twitter did not obtain his approval to pay Zatko the severance payment, a move that violated the acquisition agreement signed between the two sides.

In July, Twitter took Musk to court, hoping to force him to buy the company for $54.2 a share. The trial will begin on October 17 and will last for five days.

It is reported that the judge's ruling is in Musk's favor. The legal battle has attracted public attention, and the court has issued a series of subpoenas, including one issued by lawyer Musk to Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former chief executive of Twitter. Previously, Dorsey strongly supported Musk's acquisition of Twitter.

Whistleblower Zatko, a former head of information security for Twitter, recently reported many security problems within Twitter to the US government, in particular, he mentioned that he had raised questions about the number of robot accounts and fake accounts among Twitter users, but were ignored by management.

Zatko, who attended a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this month, said that cyber security problems within Twitter are so serious that they have even threatened the national security of the United States.

In response to Zatko's complaint, Twitter responded that the person had been fired earlier this year for performance issues. In addition, Zatko's report on Twitter is full of "false descriptions" about companies, personal privacy protection and data security policies, lack of important background information, and there are many inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

Twitter officials have not commented on the judge's decision on Thursday. Twitter lawyers have no objection to Musk's request to increase Zatko severance compensation in the content of the counterclaim.

Judge McCormick said on Thursday that Delaware law allows free changes to the content of the prosecution as long as it is a trial in favor of the lawsuit and as long as it is based on facts.

Musk had planned to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but then changed his mind. He believes that there are a large number of robot and fake accounts among the 230 million total users of the Twitter site, but Twitter did not provide him with accurate information. Twitter retorted that this was just an excuse for Mr Musk, who now began to stage "regrets" after signing the acquisition agreement.

Earlier this month, Judge McCormick approved that Musk could amend the complaint to add Twitter security issues mentioned by Zatko, such as computer security, personal privacy and robot accounts. However, Musk had hoped that the court would postpone the trial so that more whistle-blowers could be found, but the request was not supported by the judge.

Zatko's complaint was also mentioned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. Lena Khan, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), said she was shocked by a report from Zatko that Twitter had signed an agreement with FTC in 2011 to enhance platform security and respect users' privacy, but Twitter misled regulators about whether to abide by the agreement.

Lena said that some companies took FTC's order as a recommendation, which is a serious problem, and now FTC has a plan to take stricter measures. She also said that the agreement signed between Twitter and FTC in 2011 is already a legacy, and FTC's team is ready to gradually abandon the agreement and put in place a clearer regulatory regime that defines the detailed boundaries of the company's behavior.

Analyst Sheng said Lena's testimony in Congress was against Musk, who could not use Twitter's failure to comply with the security agreement with FTC as an excuse to cancel the acquisition agreement. The analyst said Lena's remarks made it difficult for the presiding judge to say that "subsequent FTC penalties will be a significant adverse impact on the acquisition agreement."

In this case, Musk went to great lengths to emphasize that Twitter was not transparent on robot accounts and fake accounts, as well as the cyber security chaos reported by Zatko, which could be a "significant adverse impact" on changing the acquisition agreement. Under Delaware law, Musk has the right to abandon the deal.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.