Two Former Twitter Employees Caught Spying On Users For Saudi Arabia

According to an indictment
filed^[1] on November 5 and
unsealed just yesterday, one of the charged Twitter employees,
American citizen Ahmad Abouammo, left the company in May
2015 and the other, Saudi citizen Ali Alzabarah, left the
company in December 2015.

Both ex-employees were recruited in 2014 by Saudi government
officials with close ties to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin
Salman, to access sensitive and non-public information of Twitter
accounts associated with known Saudi critics.

The information Abouammo and Alzabarah illegally accessed about
Twitter users include their email addresses, devices used, browser
information, user-provided biographical information, birthdates,
and other info that can be used to know a user’s location, like IP
addresses associated with the accounts and phone numbers.

Alzabarah, who joined Twitter in August 2013 as a “site
reliability engineer,” worked with the Saudi officials between May
21 and November 18, 2015, and allegedly accessed the private data
on more than 6,000 Twitter accounts.

The accounts he accessed included at least 33 users for which
Saudi Arabian law enforcement had submitted emergency disclosure
requests to Twitter.

According to the indictment, Abouammo has also been separately
charged with acting as a foreign agent and providing the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with falsified records to obstruct
the federal investigation.

Besides spying on Twitter users, Abouammo has also been accused
of deleting certain information from the social media platform,
unmasking the identities of some users, and shutting down Twitter
accounts on request of the Saudi government officials.

Along with these two former Twitter employees, the U.S.
Department of Justice has also charged another Saudi national
Ahmed al Mutairi, head of a Saudi social media company with
ties to the royal family, for his involvement in the case.

Mutairi has been accused of acting as an intermediary between
the two Twitter employees and the Saudi government officials.

Abouammo is currently in U.S. custody after he was arrested by
the FBI on Tuesday in Seattle, while the remaining two suspects are
believed to be in Saudi Arabia and still at large.

Twitter acknowledged that the company has cooperated in this
investigation and that it limits access to sensitive account
information “to a limited group of trained and vetted
employees.”

“We understand the incredible risks faced by many who use
Twitter to share their perspectives with the world and to hold
those in power accountable. We have tools in place to protect their
privacy and their ability to do their vital work,” Twitter said in
the statement.