Twitter Under Congressional Scrutiny After Hack of High-Profile Accounts - Should Lawmakers Investigate?

What’s the story?

• A hack of Twitter accounts belonging to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, and other high profile individuals & corporations on Wednesday has prompted calls from key lawmakers for congressional hearings on the social media platform’s security measures, including testimony by CEO Jack Dorsey. 
• In the attack, tweets from the accounts went out to millions of followers calling for donations to cryptocurrency. Twitter called it a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” The breach is under investigation by the FBI and New York's financial regulator.
• White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was secure and not jeopardized during the attacks, and that his digital team was in constant contact with Twitter to keep it secure.
• Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked for a committee briefing from Twitter by July 23rd wrote that the incident is “of great concern to the Committee” because of its need “to protect internet users from fraud with larger concerns about social manipulation and disinformation online.” He added

“It is not difficult to imagine future attacks being used to spread disinformation or otherwise sow discord through high-profile accounts, particularly through those of world leaders.”

• House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) tweeted:

— Eric Revell

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