The Twitter employees that spied for Saudi Arabia

TWO FORMER TWITTER 

EMPLOYEES CHARGED 

WITH SPYING FOR SAUDI 

ARABIA

The Justice Department Says They May Have Been Involved In The Assassination Of Dissident Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

TruNews,

7 November, 2019

The U.S. Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia, and there’s evidence to suggest they may have been directly involved in the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

The U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco unsealed the indictment of Ahmad Abouammo, Ahmed Almutairi (also known as Ahmed Aljbreen), and Ali Alzabarah. They have been charged with acting as a foreign government agent without notifying the U.S. government, as well as destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in a federal investigation.

Abouammo, one of the former Twitter employees, was arrested Tuesday. He is alleged to have spied on the accounts of at least three Twitter users—including one with posts discussing the inner workings of the Saudi royalty—on behalf of the Saudi government.

Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, is the other former Twitter employee. He has been accused of accessing the personal information of more than 6,000 Twitter accounts on behalf of Riyadh. One of those accounts belonged to a prominent dissident, Omar Abdulaziz, who was a close associate of Khashoggi.

Almutairi, also a Saudi national, served as an intermediary between Saudi officials and the former Twitter employees. He’s been charged separately with espionage—the first such charge against a Saudi citizen by the U.S. government.

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California David Anderson said:

“The criminal complaint unsealed today alleges that Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users. We will not allow U.S. companies or U.S. technology to become tools of foreign repression in violation of U.S. law.”

The men were accused of working with a Saudi official who led a charitable organization belonging to “Royal Family Member 1”—identified by The Washington Post as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The official has been identified as Bader al-Asaker, who runs a charity called MiSK.

According to the indictment, they began collecting data for Asaker in November of 2014—just weeks before MbS’s rise with his father’s ascension to the Saudi throne in January of 2015. At the time the data collection program began, King Salman would have been the Saudi defense minister.

A Twitter spokesman told The Washington Post that access to sensitive account information is limited to a group of “trained and vetted” employees. The WaPo report doesn’t provide any specifics about that vetting process, which clearly failed in this case—which is prompting additional concerns over the sheer volume of data Silicon Valley is collecting on its users and its ability to protect that data.

(Photo Credit: U.S. Defense Department)