(LifeSiteNews) — In a highly anticipated interview with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk revealed that United States government agencies had access to private messages sent on Twitter.
“The degree to which various government agencies had effectively full access to everything that was going on at Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Carlson. “I was not aware of that.”
“Would that include people’s DMs [Direct Messages]?” the Fox News host asked.
“Uh, yes,” Musk replied. “Yes, because the DMs are not encrypted.”
Carlson pointed out that “a lot of well-known people — reporters talking to their sources, government officials talking to each other, the rich people in the world — they are DMing each other. And the assumption obviously was incorrect about that that was private, but that was being read by various governments.”
Musk confirmed that Carlson was correct. “Scary,” the Fox News star said.
The Twitter owner said that the platform plans to introduce a feature where users can encrypt their DMs, so that not even he could access them when someone “holds a gun to my head.”
Earlier in the interview Carlson pointed out that the revelations since Musk acquired Twitter have shown it was a “magnet for the intel agencies from around the world.”
READ: New ‘Twitter Files’ release shows FBI flagged accounts, treated platform like ‘subsidiary’
“One of the things we learned after you started opening the books is that they were exerting influence from within Twitter,” Carlson said.
“I mean, it was absurd,” Musk replied, confirming Carlson’s statement.
READ: Twitter Files: Big Tech giant broke its own rules to help US gov’t spread war propaganda
Moreover, the Fox News anchor asked Musk if governments had complained about the actions he has taken since he bought Twitter.
“I haven’t had direct complaints to me. I have had sort of like some indirect complaints. I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I tweet about it,” the business mogul said, laughing.
“If I got something that was unconstitutional from the U.S. government … my reply would be to send them a copy of the First Amendment and just say like ‘what part of this are we getting wrong?’”
The eccentric billionaire explained in a different segment of the same interview that Twitter was “absurdly overstaffed.” He revealed that the social media company only has 20% of the staff it had before Musk acquired the company.
“So how do you run the company with only 20% of the staff?” Carlson asked.
“It turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter,” Musk replied.
“But 80%? That’s a lot.”
“I mean, if you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and … you don’t care that much about censorship, you can really let go of a lot of people it turns out,” the Twitter owner said, causing Carlson to burst out laughing.
Musk acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion and has since released parts of the internal communications from previous years. The so-called “Twitter Files” have revealed that the platform censored conservatives, true information about COVID shots and policies, and colluded with various U.S. intelligence agencies.
READ: 6 bombshell facts from Elon Musk’s Twitter Files you need to know