Former Twitter Executive Convicted Of Spying For Saudi Arabia

A former Twitter manager has been found guilty in an American courtroom of spying for Saudi Arabia.

Ahmad Abouammo, a dual US-Lebanese citizen was responsible for overseeing media relations for Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa, CNN reported.

But Abouammo was convicted on Tuesday on six criminal counts, including acting as an agent for Saudi Arabia and trying to disguise a payment from an official tied to Saudi’s royal family.

Saudi spying

According to CNN, during his trial in a San Francisco federal court, prosecutors said Bader Al-Asaker, a close adviser to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, recruited Abouammo to use his insider knowledge to access Twitter accounts and dig up personal information about Saudi dissidents.

Those accounts allegedly included @mujtahidd, a pseudonym for a political agitator who gained millions of Twitter followers in the Arab Spring uprisings by accusing the Saudi royal family of corruption and other misdeeds.

Prosecutors said Abouammo received at least $300,000 and a $20,000 luxury watch from Al-Asaker, and concealed the money by depositing it in a relative’s bank account in Lebanon and having it wired to his own account in the United States.

According to CNN, defense lawyers argued that the work Abouammo did at Twitter was simply part of his job.

Jurors acquitted him on five of the 11 counts he faced.

But he was convicted on six criminal counts, which included wire fraud and honest services fraud, money laundering and a conspiracy charge.

“The government demonstrated, and the jury found, that Abouammo violated a sacred trust to keep private personal information from Twitter’s customers and sold private customer information to a foreign government,” US Attorney Stephanie Hinds in San Francisco was quoted by CNN as saying in a statement.

Federal public defenders representing Abouammo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Twitter also reportedly declined to comment.

Meanwhile CNN reported that Ali Alzabarah, a former colleague of Abouammo also accused of accessing Twitter accounts on behalf of Saudi Arabia, left the United States before being charged.

Encryption protection

Global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, Jake Moore, pointed out that this case shows how difficult it is to protect against insider threats, and that full data encryption remains one of the best defences.

“Insider threats are often the hardest to protect against due to the nature of their job in amongst all the data,” noted Moore. “Once in the wrong hands it can be impossible to save it from being released which can cause dangerous aftermaths.”

“Many companies will put all personal and private data in encrypted containers that are not accessible to the business, even by any of their employees, such as passwords,” Moore added.

“However there will be occasions where this isn’t the case with other personal data such as IP addresses and phone numbers,” Moore concluded. “To counterbalance this problem, the more personal data that remains hidden from the platform in fully encrypted format, the safer it will be.”