Two former employees of Twitter have been charged with spying on thousands of Twitter user accounts on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government, likely with the purpose of unmasking the identity of dissidents.
According to an indictment filed on November 5 and unsealed just yesterday, one of the charged Twitter employees, American citizen Ahmad Abouammo, left the company in May 2015 and the other, Saudi citizen Ali Alzabarah, left the company in December 2015.
Both ex-employees were recruited in 2014 by Saudi government officials with close ties to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to access sensitive and non-public information of Twitter accounts associated with known Saudi critics.
The information Abouammo and Alzabarah illegally accessed about Twitter users include their email addresses, devices used, browser information, user-provided biographical information, birthdates, and other info that can be used to know a user’s location, like IP addresses associated with the accounts and phone numbers.
Alzabarah, who joined Twitter in August 2013 as a “site reliability engineer,” worked with the Saudi officials between May 21 and November 18, 2015, and allegedly accessed…
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