New Delhi: According to sources, a parliamentary commission quizzed senior Twitter executives in response to a whistleblower's accusation about the company's operations in India and reprimanded them after finding their responses to questions about data security and privacy to be "not satisfactory."
However, according to the sources, the business representatives denied any data security breach in India and contradicted the whistleblower's claim.
Top Twitter executives testified Friday before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology, which is chaired by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. They included Senior Director (Public Policy) Samiran Gupta and Director (Public Policy) Shagufta Kamran.
The panel questioned them about the reports on the 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, sources in the panel said.
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.
They also evaded questions about data safety and privacy, a member said, following which they were reprimanded by the MPs.
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.
The Tharoor-led panel has been holding meetings with various stakeholders including tech companies, social media firms, ministries and other regulators on the issue of citizens' data security and privacy.
The parliamentary committee is also working on a comprehensive report on data privacy and security.
Besides Tharoor, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, TRS MP Ranjith Reddy, BJP's Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and CPI(M)'s John Brittas attended the meeting.
With PTI inputs