MintPress News claims FBI was named as an important resource for Twitter personnel
Twitter hires “an alarming number”Ex-FBI Agents and Other Former “feds and spies,”Independent outlet MintPress News reports, following an analysis of recruitment and employment websites.
According to the research, in recent years the company employed “dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety and content.”
“Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI is known for its domestic intelligence and security operations. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace,”MintPress wrote.
This article provides many examples of these appointments. Karen Walsh is an FBI veteran and has been a special agent in the FBI for over 21 years. She now serves as director of corporate resilience at the Silicon Valley-based firm. Mark Jaroszewski is the Twitter director of corporate risk and security. He joined Twitter after more than 20 years working for the FBI.
MintPress also named NATO think-tank Atlantic Council and the Central Intelligence Agency as important incubators for personnel for Twitter.
“Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly ignored across the media,”The outlet was stressed.
RT has checked open-access social media accounts of Twitter’s top managers and also discovered some former employees of the security services among them – in addition to the ones mentioned in the MintPress investigation.
MintPress News stresses that while Twitter’s HR policy might appear logical – the company hires specialists in the areas it needs – it creates some serious problems, not only for the company, but also for the security agencies and organizations. MintPress quoted Coleen Rowley, a whistleblower and former FBI agent who said that agents often have their sights set on post-retirement work.
“The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to make money after retirement,”Rowley spoke.
MintPress claimed that the fact that Twitter recruits largely from the US national security organizations undermines the company’s claims about its neutrality, as the US government “is the source of some of the largest and most extensive influence operations in the world.”
There is another risk: “the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the U.S. government does – and act accordingly,”According to the outlet, To prove this claim, the website analyzed a list – compiled by Twitter – of the countries allegedly conducting disinformation campaigns.
“One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a hit list of U.S. government adversaries. Disinformation campaigns are something that all countries do to some extent. But these ‘former’ spooks and feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or sister organizations or investigate their operations,”MintPress explanation.
Twitter has added warning messages to tweets of state-affiliated media from Russia, China and Iran, and thus mirrors “US hostility”These countries are not referred to, however, it does not warn of the existence of US-affiliated media and their allies.
Ultimately, MintPress found that Twitter is not the only social media platform that’s “This intimate relationship can be maintained with FBI agents and secret agencies..”
“Facebook, for example, has entered into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, whereby the latter holds significant influence over 2.9 billion users’ news feeds, helping to decide what content to promote and what content to suppress,” it said, adding that the company has also employed former NATO Press Secretary Ben Nimmo as its head of intelligence.
According to TikTok’s outlet, it has been “filling its organization with alumni of the Atlantic Council, NATO, the CIA and the State Department.”
MintPress News asserts that Reddit as well other media including Thomson Reuters or multiple US TV stations have employed ex-spies.
“One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. It is now collaborating with them, instead of carrying out that function. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and big media begins,”It was pointed out.
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