In charges released Wednesday, the Justice Department accused two former Twitter employees, Ahmad Abouammo and Ali Alzabarah, of abusing their internal system privileges to spy on target users and pass the information they collected to Saudi Arabia. The criminal complaint also alleges that it was trivial for them to do so—a chilling reminder of how much damage an insider can cause.
The court documents, first reported by The Washington Post, also reference a third suspect, Ahmed Almutairi, who allegedly worked as an intermediary between the Twitter insiders and the Saudi government. Alzabarah and Almutairi are both Saudi citizens, while Abouammo is a United States citizen. He was arrested in Seattle on Tuesday.
Alzabarah joined Twitter in August 2013 as a site reliability engineer, the complaint says, and gained more responsibility over time until he could access users accounts and personal data—like phone numbers and IP addresses—as part of his job. He also allegedly developed relationships with Saudi intelligence agents during this time, and is accused of looking up private information from more than 6,000 Twitter accounts, including those of dissidents and political activists, on Saudi Arabia's behalf over the course of a few months in 2015. Saudi Arabia is known for aggressively exerting influence and tracking detractors on social media. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his regime have also fostered close ties to Silicon Valley.
The Justice Department alleges that Abouammo accessed data from three user accounts, at least one of which was that of an outspoken critic of the Saudi royal family. But unlike Alzaba ..
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