San Francisco: Two former Twitter Inc. employees and a Saudi national were charged by the U.S. with helping the Saudi government spy on dissidents who used the social network.
“Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users,” U.S. Attorney David Anderson in San Francisco said Wednesday in a statement announcing the criminal complaint.
Twitter said it’s committed to protecting those who use its service and applauded the Justice Department’s actions.
The two former Twitter employees are Ali Alzabarah, 35, of Saudi Arabia, and Ahmad Abouammo, 41, of Seattle. According to the complaint, they were recruited by a third Saudi, Ahmed Almutairi, 30, to “use their employee credentials to gain access without authorization to certain nonpublic information about the individuals behind certain Twitter accounts.”
All three are charged with acting as illegal agents of a foreign government. In addition, Abouammo is charged with destroying, altering, or falsifying records in a federal investigation.
“We recognize the lengths bad actors will go to try and undermine our service,” Twitter said in a statement. “Our company 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.”
Officials at the Saudi embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last month, a prominent Saudi dissident sued Twitter for failing to tell him about a hack into his account, which he attributed to Alzabarah, one of the men charged by the U.S..
Omar Abdulaziz, living in exile in Canada, claimed the hack led Saudi agents to discover plans for a social media protest that he was planning last year with Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Months later, Khashoggi was slain in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. – Bloomberg
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