Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, claims the U.S. authorities had full entry to every little thing on the social media platform, together with personal direct messages (DMs) between customers, in line with an explosive new teaser clip shared by Tucker Carlson.

And whereas the clip will seemingly make folks curious to see the total interview with Musk, which is reportedly airing on Fox Information on Monday, there are quite a lot of follow-up questions that hopefully Carlson had the foresight to ask.

“The diploma to which numerous authorities businesses successfully had full entry to every little thing that was occurring on Twitter blew my thoughts. I used to be not conscious of that,” Musk stated within the new clip that’s obtainable on Twitter.

“Would that embrace folks’s DMs?” Carlson requested.

“Ah, sure,” Musk responded within the brief clip.

Assuming Musk’s characterization is correct, we don’t but have solutions to probably the most logical follow-up questions:

1. Is Musk speaking about authorities entry obtained by way of a court docket order—the identical sort of factor that occurs on a regular basis when businesses just like the FBI wish to acquire entry to information held by tech corporations?
2. If the federal government’s entry to non-public Twitter DMs is extra nefarious than one thing that’s handed over by way of a court docket order, how did it work? Did the federal government simply consistently monitor everybody’s messages? What mechanism was used for this surveillance?
3. Does this imply Elon Musk or anybody else at Twitter has entry to consumer DMs? What sort of protections are in place to guard the privateness of customers from snooping workers who could also be interested in what celebrities are saying in DMs or what an ex-partner is likely to be saying on the service?
4. Does Musk plan to supply encryption for direct messages, one thing he’s talked about earlier than however by no means carried out?

These aren’t idle questions, particularly when Musk is concerned. Two U.S. senators just lately wrote to considered one of Musk’s different corporations Tesla to demand details about how buyer privateness could or will not be protected. Because it seems, Tesla workers have been reportedly sharing every kind of movies that weren’t meant to be seen exterior of Tesla engineers underneath supposedly strict guidelines.

I assume the one strategy to discover out whether or not any of those essential questions get answered is to tune in to Tucker Carlson’s present on Monday night time. You bought me, Fox Information. I wish to know what else Musk has to say about how Twitter dealt with DM privateness and what it’s doing proper now on the subject. But when these very simple questions aren’t answered it’s positively going to be a waste of everybody’s time.