Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that a former employee of Twitter who had been accused of espionage for Saudi Arabia had been found guilty. A jury also found the employee, a resident of the U.S. named Ahmad Abouammo, guilty of money laundering, fabricating records, and conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Abouammo could receive a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.
He Allegedly Spy for Saudi Arabia
Abouammo formerly managed media partnerships for Twitter and assisted well-known individuals in the Middle East and North Africa with the promotion of their accounts.
However, he used his position to gain access to people who were critical of the Saudi government's email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth. Between November 2014 and May 2015, Abouammo gave that information to Saudi officials in exchange for gifts, according to The Verge.
He and another Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, were allegedly approached by the Saudi government, which offered them money and luxury items in exchange for their aid in acquiring personal information about Twitter users of interest.
TechCrunch reported that the Department of Justice accused Abouammo and Alzabarah of spying in 2019. Later, in 2020, the agency increased the charges to include a third person, Ahmed Almutairi, who is accused of orchestrating the plot. Both Almutairi and Alzabarah are still looked after by the U.S. government.
Abouammo Was Accused To Be Working With an Aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman
TechCrunch said that according to Bloomberg, Abouammo was charged with conspiring to suppress dissenters alongside an aide to Mohammed bin Salman, who now serves as Saudi Arabia's crown prince. Abouammo allegedly asserted that he was merely carrying out his duties and blamed Twitter for failing to protect user data.
The prosecution said during the trial that a prominent official in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's administration asked Abouammo for assistance in looking into his enemies.
In the course of that cooperation, Abouammo allegedly gathered personal data from Saudi government critics, such as birth dates, email addresses, and phone numbers, and forwarded it to his friends there.
Meanwhile, according to Abouammo's defense, he only had access to the data while doing his regular job tasks at Twitter.
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Twitter Warned Users That Their Accounts Might Have Been Targeted by State-Sponsored Actors
Twitter warned several users that their accounts had been targeted by state-sponsored actors in 2015 because of Abouammo's ties to the Saudi government.
A separate TechCrunch report cited The New York Times, which said that a small number of users received warnings from Twitter saying that their accounts "may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors."
"As a precaution, we are alerting you that your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors," said Twitter in the email to affected users.
Some questioned the connection between the impacted accounts as Twitter at the time declined to explain what had caused the email warning.
Meanwhile, in the event of alleged state-sponsored hacking or attacks, Facebook and Google also have similar notifications set up.
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