US judge rejects Musk's 'absurd' demand to give all Twitter users' data

San Francisco, Aug 26 (IANS) A US judge has rejected Elon Musk's absurd demand to ask Twitter to hand over all data for approximately 200 million user accounts for the last three years.

Judge Kathaleen McCormick said no to Musk's legal team's "absurdly broad" request, saying that Twitter must hand over the 9,000 accounts it reviewed for its audit in the fourth quarter of 2021, reports The Verge.

"Plaintiff (Twitter) has difficulty quantifying the burden of responding to that request because no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort. It suffices to say, Plaintiff has demonstrated that such a request is overly burdensome," the judge ruled late on Thursday.

Twitter will now need to hand over "a small additional set of data from its review database", said the judge.

In addition, the judge also agreed to Twitter's request for documents from Musk's side, like the data analysis Musk performed before he announced to terminate the $44 billion takeover deal.

Musk and Twitter will get engaged to a proper courtroom battle from October 17 for five days.

Musk's team has also submitted a subpoena for evidence from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Meanwhile, Twitter's former head of security, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, has claimed that the Parag Agrawal-led platform lied about the actual number of bots on its platform and misled federal regulators about users' safety, creating a storm.