Twitter Snoopgate: US government had ‘full access’ to everything on Twitter, says Elon Musk

In an explosive interview, Twitter’s billionaire owner Elon Musk has stated that when he acquired and seized full control of the social media behemoth last year, he was astounded to learn the exact extent of US government participation and access to Twitter messages.

“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, adding he “was not aware of that” until he paid $44 billion for Twitter last October.

Also read: US Government controls all social media platforms, suppresses information, claims Elon Musk

Musk stated that “everything” includes users’ ostensibly private direct conversations, although a brief Sunday preview of the impending interview did not reveal if Musk went on to criticise individual agencies or their techniques. It’s also unclear what, if anything, has changed since then to limit the government’s access to private conversations.

Since buying Twitter in October and taking over as CEO, Musk has been releasing regular batches of internal documents and communications in an attempt to shed light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies and ties with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, enlisting independent journalists to break each document dump.

Also read: Twitter Files: Elon Musk says US govt agencies demanded suspension of over 250k accounts

Journalist Matt Taibbi, who first reported on the first batch of files in December, recently referred to the collusion between social media platforms, non-governmental organisations, and the US government to suppress information they did not like as the “censorship-industrial complex,” describing it as “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” and the polar opposite of the free press envisioned in the US Constitution.

Taibbi was asked to appear before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government last month, along with fellow Twitter Files writer Michael Shellenberger.

Mr Musk also expressed concerns about AI in his interview with Carlson, claiming that the technology has the potential to destroy human civilization.

Also read: Twitter is working on a secret AI project, despite Elon Musk calling for a halt on all AI projects

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential – however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial – for civilizational destruction,” he stated.

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