Being exposed – having private information exposed, from your real name to your home address – on social media is scary enough. But for outspoken dissidents, revealing their details to the authoritarian government they criticize can be deadly. And to do it from a worker on a social media platform is an impressive betrayal.
But this week, a former Twitter employee was found guilty of spying for the Saudi government in 2015 — passing on private user information to a contact with close ties to the country’s government and its controversial crown prince. , Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS.
A San Francisco federal court jury convicted Ahmad Abouammo, a dual Lebanese-American citizen, of six counts, including money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was acquitted of five other charges.
While it remains unclear what the Saudi government did with the information it received, “Hatching Twitter” author Nick Bilton told The Post that while social media sites “are not vulnerable to [directly] attacked by rogue nations,” they have weaknesses that can be used. Social media sites, he said, “are obviously vulnerable… [to] a single employee receiving information that could easily be used to harm someone.”
Abouammo, formerly Twitter’s media partnership manager, allegedly focused on exposing the identifying details and contact information of Twitter account holders who expressed criticism of the Saudi government, MBS and MBS’s family. As alleged in court, he provided private email addresses and phone numbers – including the person behind the username @mujtahidd.
That handle (Miriam-Webster translates it as “mujtahid,” with a D, meaning an authoritative interpreter of Islamic religious law) is said by Middle East Eye to be a Saudi whistleblower. The activist posts in Arabic to criticize his or her home country’s government and ruling family to 2.6 million followers.
But getting personal data isn’t cheap.
Abouammo, 44, is accused of accepting about $300,000 in cash and at least one Hublot wristwatch (worth $42,000) from the Saudi government.
“They pay for a mole,” is how prosecutor Eric Cheng summarized the situation during his closing remarks in the Golden State courtroom. After pointing out that the illegal payments exceeded Abouammo’s annual salary by about three times, he added, “We all know that kind of money is not wasted.”
Author Bilton is not surprised by any of this.
“At the same time, Abouammo was lying to FBI agents”—under questioning, he claimed the watch was worth only $500 and that he received no more than $100,000—“I wrote a story for Vanity Fair about spies from other countries, especially. Rogue nations, who were coming to Silicon Valley to try to steal corporate secrets and spy on foreign nationals,” Bilton told The Post. “I remember sitting in the offices of a company tech giant and one executive said, “Absolutely, there are spies working here. Who are they? I have no idea. But they are here.”
Twitter and Abouammo’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
Abouamo’s odyssey allegedly began with a seemingly benign request. According to a criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice, in April 2014, a public relations agency representing the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contacted Twitter and asked for help verifying the account of a Saudi news personality. The job fell to Abouammo, who was tasked with working with Middle Eastern media partners.
It emerged in court that he was involved with a man named Bader Binasaker, a senior adviser to MBS. The crown prince has tried to cultivate the image of being a modern royal. But US officials say MBS likely ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. MBS denies this.
Over the next several months, Abouammo and Binasaker developed a relationship through emails and texts. In early December, Abouammo was in London, where he received a call from Binasaker who was in Paris.
“I will come to London tomorrow for a day”, he is said to have explained. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
Binasaker arrived in London with a gift: a $42,000 Hublot, which has been used as evidence of what attracted Abouammo to work on behalf of the Saudi government. As Cheng said in the courtroom, “The kingdom had now secured its inside information on Twitter.”
According to the feds’ complaint, by December 12, 2014, Abouammo had provided the Saudis with information via email about a Twitter user believed to be @mujtahidd. The other, according to Buzzfeed, is a man who impersonated a member of the Saudi royal family. Court documents say Abouammo created an LLC through which a $100,000 money transfer was sent from Saudi Arabia. By May 2015, Abouammo had leaked information to at least two Twitter users and left the company. He moved to Seattle and continued to receive money transfers from Saudi sources.
In Abouammo’s defense, public defender Joseph Matthews argued that his client was just doing his job: Helping VIP Twitter users. It was claimed in court that the employee did not know he was helping the controlling Saudi government to obtain information on perceived enemies of the state. “Completely legal” and “completely proper” is how Matthews framed his client’s activities.
According to allegations by prosecutors, Abouammo also introduced Binasaker to Ali Alzabarah, then an engineer at Twitter.
Alzabarah, the complaint alleges, was recruited and recruited to work with the Saudis to provide details on various Twitter users. While it is not known how much he received for his services, Alzabarah is alleged to have provided information on about 6,000 Twitter users who were of interest to the Saudi government. This happened between May and November 2015.
As stated in the complaint, “Alzabarah began to access, without authorization, the private data of Twitter users many.
At an undisclosed point, a Twitter security engineer informed the FBI that Alzabarah had no legitimate reason to access the information on all those accounts. As the complaint states, “Alzabarah’s job was to assist in the operation and maintenance of the site, which did not include access to individual user accounts.”
On December 2, 2015, according to the complaint, Twitter representatives confronted Alzabarah about his access to private information without prior authorization. A day later, according to the complaint, he, his wife and daughter boarded an early morning flight from San Francisco International Airport to Saudi Arabia.
While in transit, he submitted his resignation letter on Twitter.
Alzabarah remains at large and is on the FBI’s wanted list, as is the third participant, Ahmed Almutairi.
As Abouammo now awaits sentencing, the world is left to wonder whether or not anonymity is safe on social media. One of the government’s findings is that if the right people, with the right connections, want to remove you, you’re outnumbered whether you like it or not.
