Ride the Lightning

Two Twitter Ex-Employees Charged with Spying for Saudi Arabia

November 13, 2019

The New York Times (sub.req.) reported on November 6^th that the Justice Department has accused two men of using their positions and their access to Twitter's internal systems to aid Saudi Arabia by obtaining information on American citizens and Saudi dissidents who opposed the policies of the kingdom and its leaders.

Ali Alzabarah was an engineer who rose through the ranks at Twitter to a job that gave him access to personal information and account data of the social media service's millions of users.

Ahmad Abouammo was a media partnerships manager at the company who could see the email addresses and phone numbers of Twitter accounts.

The two men were charged with acting as agents of a foreign power inside the United States, in the first complaint of its kind involving Saudis in the country. The case raised questions about the security of American technology companies already under scrutiny for spreading disinformation and influencing public opinion, showing that these firms can be penetrated from the inside.

It also underscored the broad effort that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and his close advisers have conducted to silence critics both inside the kingdom and abroad. Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who was critical of the way Saudi Arabia is run, was murdered last year by Saudi agents in Istanbul.

Why would the Saudis spy on Twitter? Because it is a town square of voices and opinions.

Saudi operatives groomed Mr. Alzabarah, and even before the charges were filed on Wednesday, Western intelligence officials had suspected him of spying on user accounts at Twitter to help the Saudi leadership.

Saudi operatives have also used Twitter to harass critics. Twitter has been a popular platform for news in the kingdom since the Arab Spring uprisings began in 2010.

Both Mr. Alzabarah and Mr. Abouammo left Twitter in 2015. A spokesman for Twitter said: "We recognize the lengths bad actors will go to try and undermine our service. Our company limits access to sensitive account information to a limited group of trained and vetted employees."

Twitter added that it was committed to protecting those who used the service to talk about freedom and human rights.

American companies like Twitter are attractive targets for foreign agents. "The U.S. has such a dominant position in social media and technology that we are a natural target for our enemies and frenemies," said Mark D. Rasch, a former head of the Justice Department's computer crime division. "They will use any means at their disposal to get individuals' data from U.S. companies for their intelligence and, in this case, suppression efforts."

In addition to Mr. Alzabarah and Mr. Abouammo, federal prosecutors charged Ahmed Almutairi, who previously ran a social media marketing company that did work for the Saudi royal family. He and Mr. Alzabarah are Saudi citizens, and Mr. Abouammo is an American, according to the complaint filed by prosecutors.

The communications between the Twitter employees and a Saudi official began in 2014, according to the complaint. Investigators did not contact Twitter until the end of 2015, when they informed executives that the Saudi government was grooming employees to gain information about the company's users.

Read the full article to get the details.

Saudi Arabia is one of Twitter's five most active markets. In the first six months of 2015, when Mr. Alzabarah is accused of starting to use his access to account information, Twitter received 93 emergency requests for user data from Saudi Arabia, according to a company transparency report.

The underlying question is whether other social media platforms, or other sources of user data, are being infiltrated by foreign interests. My guess is that the answer is yes.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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