Someone I know had been working for twitter and they said they were blown away at the lack of internal protections built in to the system. I guess it could be a goldmine of data for spies.
The F.B.I. began monitoring the Twitter employees in 2014, according to the complaint. Investigators did not contact Twitter until the end of 2015, when they informed executives that the Saudi government was grooming employees to gain information about the company’s users.
[...]
During his employment at Twitter, Mr. Alzabarah had grown increasingly close to Saudi intelligence operatives, Western intelligence officials told executives. The operatives eventually persuaded Mr. Alzabarah to peer into the accounts of users they sought information on, including dissidents and activists who spoke against the crown, multiple people have told The Times.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191107003511/https://www.nytim...
Mr. Khashoggi’s online attackers were part of a broad effort dictated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his close advisers to silence critics both inside Saudi Arabia and abroad. Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi. The vigorous push also appears to include the grooming — not previously reported — of a Saudi employee at Twitter whom Western intelligence officials suspected of spying on user accounts to help the Saudi leadership.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191107062324/https://www.nytim...
Charges were for acting as foreign agent without notice and records falsification.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200920010209/https://www.washi...
I wonder how many people are murdered each year due to communications platforms that haven't implemented end to end encryption for private user communications, since all these large platforms are easily infiltrated by agents of homicidal regimes.
Why would a high suit shmoozing media partnership manager have access to user info? Seems like an issue of data access at Twitter.
Odd that the defendant used a federal public defender instead of a private attorney and the lack of a plea deal here (in exchange for cooperation?)
> Ali Alzabarah, another former Twitter employee who was also charged in the scheme, fled the country before he could be arrested
Apparently “Alzabarah [is] believed to be in Saudi Arabia” [1].
What the fuck?! Sooner we can decouple from that regime the better in my book.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-former-twitter-employees-...
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2020: How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter
> When the conversation concluded, management seized Alzabarah’s laptop, put him on administrative leave, and escorted him out of the building.
> At 5:17 p.m. he called a handler, identified as Associate-1 in the FBI complaint, who arrived in a white SUV two hours later. Driving around Alzabarah’s neighborhood, the two men called “Foreign Official-l” — al-Asaker, according to the Washington Post — at 7:20 p.m., and again at 7:22 p.m. and 7:31 p.m. They then called Dr. Faisal Al Sudairi, the Saudi consul general in Los Angeles, at 8:30 p.m., 8:38 p.m., and 9:26 p.m. Shortly after midnight, the consul general called Alzabarah back and spoke with him for three minutes.
> Early the next morning, Alzabarah, his wife, and daughter boarded a plane for Saudi Arabia.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-saud...
Twitter basically let him walk out. Probably afraid of backlash in case they called the cops on him.