Saudi spying case: Who is Ahmad Abouammo, the ex-Twitter employee who’s been sentenced to 42 months in US prison?

Twitter, the social media giant, is in the news for all the wrong reasons. As news came in of the Elon Musk-run company banning accounts of journalists belonging to CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, it also was reported that a former employee was sentenced to 42 months in prison. His crime: Spying for Saudi Arabia. The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Thursday said that 45-year-old Ahmad Abouammo, had passed on private user information associated with critics of the kingdom in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Mr Abouammo violated the trust placed on him to protect the privacy of individuals by giving their personal information to a foreign power for profit. His conduct was made all the more egregious by the fact that the information was intended to target political dissidents speaking out against that foreign power,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen. Abouammo’s life of spying Ahmad Abouammo, formerly a resident of Walnut Creek, California, but now living in Seattle, worked at Twitter from 2013 to 2015 and managed media partnerships with high-profile users in the Middle East and North Africa. Court records show that Abouammo, a dual US-Lebanese citizen, was part of a scheme to acquire personal information of users, including phone numbers and birth dates, for a Saudi government agent. Investigations by American authorities reveal that Abouammo accessed the email addresses and phone numbers of accounts that criticised the Saudi government and in turn received a $42,000 (Rs 34.79 lakh) watch and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prosecutors said that Abouammo’s scheme began in the early months of 2014 when he met with man named Bader Binasaker, who was then an aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, during a tour of Twitter’s headquarters. As time progressed, they cultivated a relationship and in December of the same year, the two met in London during a work trip. According to investigation, it was then that he received the $42,000 Hublot watch. Court records show that he then accessed the ‘mujtahidd’ Twitter account. This account gained millions of Twitter followers in the Arab Spring uprisings by accusing the Saudi royal family of corruption and other misdeeds. A Fox News report states that the following year Abouammo travelled to Lebanon and opened an account in the name of his father before receiving $100,000 from Binasaker. He then, according to the DOJ, laundered it into the US in small wire transfers with false descriptions. The year Abouammo left Twitter, he received another $100,000 from the official, which he once again laundered. During the course of the trial, Abouammo’s defence stated that that the work he did at Twitter was simply part of his job. Angela Chuang, a public defender representing Abouammo, as per a Wall Street Journal report, said that the only crime committed by him was not reporting the watch or the money payments to Twitter, a violation of the company’s gift policy. As per Twitter’s policy, any gift worth more than $100 needs to be reported. Arguing for her client, Chuang said that that such a misstep wasn’t enough to convict him. “We just spent the last two weeks in a glorified HR investigation.” However, the jury found him guilty and has been convicted of acting as a foreign agent without notice to the attorney general, conspiracy, wire fraud, international money laundering and falsification of records. In addition to his three-and-a-half years of imprisonment, Abouammo has also been sentenced to another three years of supervision. The judge has also ordered him to return the watch and the cash he received as bribes. He must surrender on 31 March to begin serving his prison sentence. [caption id=“attachment_11819571” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The Abouammo case highlights the threat that Twitter faces from foreign spies. AP[/caption] Dangers of Twitter Abouammo is the first person found guilty and sentenced for spying on Twitter on behalf of a foreign government. However, it highlights the threat that Twitter faces from foreign spies who see value in the information it stores on users and their direct communications. In the past, people within the company and other cybersecurity experts have spoken of how the platform has been infiltrated by spies from at least two other countries. Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko , Twitter former head of security, in his testimony to US Congress had said that the company’s leadership had failed to take action against spies on its payroll. He said in his testimony that Twitter knew that at least one agent from China’s Ministry of State Security was on the company’s payroll. He also alleged that the Indian government had placed an agent inside Twitter. He testified that Twitter struggled to identify potential infiltration by foreign agents and typically was only able to do so when notified by outside agencies. The company was “unwilling to put the effort in” to hunt down bad actors within its ranks, he said. He told Congress, “”I’m reminded of one conversation with an executive when I said, ‘I am confident that we have a foreign agent’. Their response was, ‘Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more?’” Neither has the Saudi government or Twitter commented on the case. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.