The story could be taken from a movie. Ahmad Abouammo, an American-Lebanese, has just been convicted across the Atlantic of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia when he worked at Twitter. An accusation relayed by CNBC, Thursday, December 15.
Key information
Ahmad Abouammo worked for Twitter until 2015. He has just been sentenced to three years in prison for having participated in a major espionage operation. The employee was in charge of Twitter’s media partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa. The man is accused of having illegally recovered confidential data such as telephone numbers and birth dates of several opponents for the benefit of the Saudi authorities.
The individual worked for a government agent. He was paid through his cousin’s bank account and received gifts on a regular basis, according to the testimony of an FBI agent. The exfiltration of data from Twitter began in 2014, according to the prosecution.
As a reminder, in Saudi Arabia, anti-government public expression is very severely repressed, including on social networks. Sentences of several decades for simple tweets critical of the authorities have already been pronounced in the country. Ahmad Abouammo provided the government with all the useful information to identify opponents on the social network.
Several hundred thousand dollars
After leaving Twitter in 2015, the accused continued to help the Saudi government. He then contacted some of his colleagues and asked to provide him with the private information of several accounts. He also demanded the deletion of several tweets critical of the government, again according to the testimony of the FBI agent.
For committing these misdeeds, the man would have received several hundred thousand dollars. A smoothly conducted spy operation, which resulted in the conviction of Ahmad Abouammo, Wednesday, to three years in prison. The man is today the first to be condemned by civil justice in the United States for such an operation of espionage. Contacted by CNBC, the Saudi consulate in the United States did not comment on the matter.
Twitter infiltrated by several governments?
Peiter C. Zatko, known as “Mudge”, once in charge of cybersecurity at Twitter, assured that several foreign governments have infiltrated the social network in recent years. In a complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, he accused his former company of hiding several data leaks.
According to this former official, Twitter would have been the target of the governments of India, Nigeria, Russia and even Chinese services. Employees of the social network would have been chosen by these countries to transmit information on the accounts of several users.