Elon Musk speaks onstage during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2023 in New York City.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times
A former security chief at Twitter said an advisor of Elon Musk’s wanted make huge cuts in hours.Alan Rosa says in a lawsuit that the advisor wanted 50% of the security budget cut “by midnight.”Rosa alleges that when he raised concerns, he was fired five days later in December 2022.
Former Twitter head of security Alan Rosa is accusing Elon Musk and one of his advisors of cutting costs that would make the company breach federal rules — then firing Rosa when he tried to stop them.
In a lawsuit against Musk and X filed on Tuesday in New Jersey, Rosa alleged that one of Musk’s advisors, Steve Davis, ordered him to cut the company’s physical security budget by 50% within hours.
“On or around the evening of December 1, 2022, Davis directed Plaintiff to cut the physical security budget by an additional 50% by midnight. This was done in hours, not days,” Rosa’s lawsuit said.
Davis is the CEO of the Boring Company, another of Musk’s firms that aims to build tunnel networks under major US cities to ease traffic.
The exchange would have occurred around five weeks after Musk took over Twitter, which he renamed X, on October 28 that year.
Musk and his circle of advisors had already cut the physical budget by 50% during that period, meaning Davis wanted it slashed even further, Rosa’s lawsuit said.
The security chief objected to the decision, saying it would put the company building at risk of violating a court order requiring Twitter to safeguard user data and privacy.
The building’s security staff were responsible for watching “over 800 laptops and other electronic devices” essential to the privacy safeguards, Rosa’s lawsuit said.
He was being told to cut these staff from the building, and Rosa was worried that there could be a security risk from “numerous protestors” outside the headquarters, per the lawsuit.
Rosa says he was fired from Twitter days later
A few hours after raising his concerns, Rosa received a call from Davis, who told him he was no longer in charge of the physical security team and then hung up, the lawsuit said.
Five days later, Rosa discovered he’d lost his company access and was effectively fired without an official explanation, the lawsuit added.
The suit also alleges that Davis told him on November 11, 2022 to shut down Salesforce at Twitter, which the company used to share information with law enforcement about “time-sensitive and important legal matters.”
Rosa disagreed with the decision, and told a vice president of the company’s legal team about his objections, the lawsuit added.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Rosa was denied his promised severance package and vested stock.
He seeks compensatory, emotional distress, and punitive damages from Musk, advisors such as Davis, and X.
Rosa’s suit is one of several already filed by laid-off Twitter employees against Musk and X, and many say their contracts were breached and accused the billionaire of breaking state employment laws.
Rosa was Head of Global Information Technology and Information Security when Musk assumed control of Twitter, and oversaw a team of around 500 staff, according to his lawsuit.
His departure from the company came after Twitter’s chief security officer, Lea Kissner, and Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, both left the company in the wake of Musk’s takeover.
The flurry of vacancies prompted worries from the Federal Trade Commission, which said in November that it was observing Twitter’s compliance with “deep concern.”
Musk and an attorney for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.