A former Twitter executive is suing Elon Musk after being fired after objecting to budget cuts that would damage Federal Trade Commission (FTC) compliance.
The former security executive claims he was fired after protesting strict budget cuts implemented by Musk, among a raft of changes made to the social network.
A lawsuit outlining the case reported that Alan Rosa who was fired on December 6th, who was Head of Global Information Technology and Information Security was working from his home in New Jersey. Rosa alleges that: “Twitter has refused to pay its portion of the arbitration fees despite being ordered by JAMS (Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services) to do so.”
The lawsuit claimed further: “Defendants never responded to these emails and never paid their portion of the arbitration fee.”
Following Musk’s widespread layoffs, Twitter won a court order directing former employees who sued the social network to settle their claims via arbitration instead. However, Twitter did not pay the arbitration costs for these employees and opted to settle the claims with the approximately 2000 employees. This news coming as Musk’s X was involved in another court case.
Rosa, however, is choosing to sue Twitter individually – claiming he was due a $200’000 performance bonus in February 2023 and an additional equity compensation of $364’000.
Concerns over Twitter FTC compliance
Once Musk began laying off staff at Twitter, Rosa’s concerns grew over these staff cuts negatively impacting Twitter’s compliance with a 2022 consent decree issued by the FTC.
The lawsuit claimed: “The Twitter FTC Consent Decree required Twitter to establish, implement, and maintain a comprehensive privacy and information security program… Musk was consistently dismissive of the Twitter FTC Consent Decree and Twitter’s obligations under it…”
The FTC is now investigating whether Musk and Twitter/X are actually complying with the requirements of the settlement. The lawsuit also names Steve Davis as a ‘high-level advisor’. Who apparently shared the same level of dismissiveness of the FTC compliance as Musk did.
Rosa also warned that the removal of a Salesforce program – needed to exchange information with law agencies across the world – would danger their compliance with the European Digital Service Act.
Musk gave no explanation for firing
Allegedly, on December 1st Rosa was instructed by Davis to half the security budget of Twitter by midnight.
Rosa objected to this order, as the action “posed a substantial and specific danger to public health and/or safety because there were numerous protestors at the physical building location.”
This led to Davis calling Rosa and informing him that he was “removing his oversight of the physical security team” before swiftly hanging up the phone.
Davis was fired by Musk a mere five days later and argues that his role with Twitter “was terminated in retaliation for objecting to the activities” that were asked of him. A severance package was allegedly offered to Rosa, however, it is currently “put on hold, pending an investigation regarding his conduct during his employment.”
This statement led Davis to label the investigation a “sham”.
