Clean and clear: The Hindu Editorial on a Twitter whistle-blower and the Indian government

Both the Government and Twitter need to reassure the public that sensitive user data were not compromised 

Both the Government and Twitter need to reassure the public that sensitive user data were not compromised 

A whistle-blower’s disclosure that the Indian Government forced Twitter to hire its agent, who then got access to the platform’s user data, should alarm anyone even remotely interested in the health of democracy in the country. At the very least, it requires an official response from the Government as also from Twitter, arguably the most influential social media network of these times. Instead, there now is silence. But perhaps this is hardly surprising, given how such matters have played themselves out in recent years. The disclosure was made to U.S. government agencies and congressional committees last month but came to light when CNN and The Washington Post reported about it last week. The whistle-blower is Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, a cybersecurity expert brought in to help a Jack Dorsey-run Twitter in November 2020 to confront challenges related to security and privacy. He was fired by Mr. Dorsey’s successor Parag Agrawal early this year. In his short stint there, he found that Twitter had a long way to go to address security vulnerabilities — the disclosure says, “he uncovered extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter”. But, according to Mr. Zatko’s disclosure, Twitter conveyed a very different message to the outside world, and thus ended up deceiving everyone from users to investors, and from the Federal Trade Commission to Elon Musk (who not long ago seemed to want to buy the social media network).

The Indian angle may be a side-story in all this but, worryingly for the world’s largest democracy, comes under the ambit of what Mr. Zatko considers “multiple episodes suggesting that Twitter had been penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies and/or was complicit in threats to democratic governance”. To be fair, there are unanswered questions about this part of his disclosure, whose most important line is the following: “The Indian government forced Twitter to hire specific individual(s) who were government agents, who (because of Twitter’s basic architectural flaws) would have access to vast amounts of Twitter sensitive data”. It is not clear, for instance, whether the agent he is referring to is the grievance officer that social media networks operating in India are required to recruit, as per the new laws framed last year. Also, it may seem that the access to sensitive data that this agent has is a product of Twitter’s own flaws and not anything else. That is why a clarification is important. In recent years, the Government has come across as being too eager to block its critics on social platforms. That, on top of unfettered access to sensitive user data, as is being alleged in the disclosure, can kill free speech. It is now time for the Government to assure everyone that it is indeed batting for the individual’s rights of free speech and privacy.

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Clear winners spotted after four-way bidding for ICC media rights

There will be no second-round e-auction for the ICC media rights after a clear winner - or winners - emerged when the sealed bids were opened on Friday. The identity of the winner/s for the right to broadcast ICC events in India has not been disclosed yet - the ICC board makes that call on Saturday after a recommendation is sent to it by the media-rights advisory group appointed to adjudicate on the bidding process.

There has been no official communication from the ICC on whether a solitary winner won both the TV and digital rights or whether there were separate winners in the two categories. What is also not yet confirmed is whether the rights have been sold for four years or eight, as the ICC had kept the tenure of the rights flexible, in order to exploit the best number commercially.

Though the value of the winning bid is unlikely to be made public, the ICC is believed to have set a base price of USD 1.44 billion (for a four-year deal) and USD 4 billion for an eight-year one. Its last rights deal, for eight years, was worth approximately USD 2.1 billion. Because of the changing nature of the market and especially the digital streaming landscape, as well as the increased number of ICC events in this cycle, the expectation was that any new deal would be considerably bigger than the last one.

A total of six packages were on sale with the sealed bids opened on Friday at the ICC headquarters in Dubai in the presence of the bidders. It is learned that four bidders participated, including Disney Star*, Sony, Viacom and Zee.

After facing mounting pressure from the bidders over the past month over concerns about the transparency of the process, the ICC had said that an e-auction would take place as a second round of bidding should the value of the two best bids in the first round be within 10% of each other.

By Saturday, it is expected that the ICC Board comprising 17 directors will discuss the recommendations of the rights advisory group and announce the identities of the winner/s. The five-person advisory group includes ICC chair Greg Barclay, Ross McCollum (the chair of the ICC's Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee), Anurag Dahiya (the ICC's chief commercial officer), Richard Freudenstein (finance & commercial affairs director) and BCCI acting CEO Hemang Amin.

*Disney Star and ESPNcricinfo are part of the Walt Disney Company

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