Elon Musk said he was shocked at the level of penetration that U.S. government agencies had with Twitter prior to his buying the social media platform.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind, I was not aware of that,” Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview that aired Monday night.
Part 2 of Elon Musk’s interview with Tucker Carlson will air Tuesday night. / Video Image
“Would that include people’s DMs (direct messages)?” asked Carlson.
“Yes,” responded Musk. “Because the DM’s aren’t encrypted.”
It had been suspected for some time that individual employees at Twitter had full access to users’ private messages, but for the feds to have enjoyed the same access was seen as stunning.
Musk said he is moving to create a feature, which he hopes to unveil later this month, that would give users on the platform the option to encrypt direct messages with the hopes of limiting government interference.
If the encryption option is selected, “no one at Twitter can see what you’re talking about,” Musk said. “You could put a gun to my head and I couldn’t tell you. That’s how it should be.”
Musk explained that he made it a personal mission to expose the extent to which Twitter and the federal government went to moderate content, particularly with his release of “The Twitter Files,” which granted independent journalists access to Twitter’s archives for a series of reports, including what led to former President Trump’s suspension and the government’s role in Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.