Twitter officials were interrogated by Parliament panel

As per news reports, a parliamentary panel questioned top Twitter officials over a whistle-blower's revelations on its India operations, and gave them a dressing-down as their replies on issues of data security and privacy were "not satisfactory".

The officials from the company, however, refuted the whistle-blower's allegations and denied there was any data security breach in India. Top Twitter executives, including Senior Director (Public Policy) Samiran Gupta and Director (Public Policy) Shagufta Kamran, deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology chaired by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.

The panel questioned them about the reports on former head of Twitter (security) Peiter Zatko's allegations the microblogging site knowingly allowed the Indian government to place its "agents" on the company payroll where they had "direct unsupervised access to the company's systems and user data".

The Twitter officials denied any such thing having happened. The members also questioned the social media giant's officials if their data security policies are in sync with local policies and with the single global privacy policy. They asked how the microblogging site handles conflicts in national privacy policies of different countries, with the sources saying the executives didn't give satisfactory replies.

Zatko's allegations were reported by international media houses. Twitter has already stated it was a "false narrative" and the allegations and "opportunistic" timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on the company, its customers and its shareholders.