Former Twitter Employee Gets Prison Time for Spying for Saudi Arabia

Zeina Abouammo, second right, whose husband, US citizen Ahmad Abouammo, is accused of using his position at Twitter to spy on accounts, arrives for a detention hearing at US District Court, Western District of Washington in Seattle, Wash., on Nov. 8, 2019. Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP via Getty Images

A former manager at Twitter who was convicted of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia and leaking U.S. data has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Ahmad Abouammo, 44, used to work at Twitter as a media partnerships manager for the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region and left the job in 2021. During his time at the company, he transferred sensitive information to Saudi officials which helped in identifying certain Twitter users, and exposed them to potential persecution in the Islamic kingdom. He was found guilty by a federal jury in August 2022.

Abouammo was facing a maximum penalty of multiple decades in prison. Prosecutors had sought a jail time of seven years, insisting that they wanted a sentence “strong enough to deter others in the technology and social media industry from selling out the data of vulnerable users,” according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, Abouammo’s attorneys had sought a probationary sentence for him at his home without any prison time. They cited his ongoing health issues, the lack of other convictions, and family problems for such a ruling.

During his time at Twitter, Abouammo’s family was struggling to meet certain financial needs, including specialized medical care for his sister’s newborn daughter, they said.

After hearing both sides, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen sentenced Abouammo to a prison term of three and a half years on Wednesday.

A Spy in Twitter

As an employee at Twitter, Abouammo was responsible for protecting user information. He was also required by company policies to disclose any security policy violation, and report gifts received from those who had business dealings with the firm.

Abouammo started receiving bribes from Saudi Arabia back in December 2014. An official had gifted him a luxury Hublot watch worth $42,000.

Following the meeting, Abouammo began accessing private information about multiple Twitter accounts, one of which was an influential individual who was very critical of the Saudi royal family and the government.

In 2015, he traveled to Lebanon and opened an account in his father’s name. The account was credited with $100,000 from Saudi Arabia, which Abouammo laundered into the United States. FBI agents interviewed him in October 2018, at which time Abouammo supplied false information to investigators and falsified an invoice.

In a Department of Justice press release on Aug. 10, Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division said that the case is proof of the agency’s commitment to defending America’s constitutional rights.

“Authoritarian governments rely on transnational repression to shape the world in their favor and stifle dissent. We remain dedicated to protecting the United States from all threats foreign and domestic, which includes efforts by foreign governments to stalk, harass, or intimidate the people within our borders,” he said.

Saudi Censorship, Influencing Twitter

The introduction of Twitter in Saudi Arabia had sparked hopes that it would democratize discourse in a nation where the government is known for imposing limits on freedom of speech.

But instead, the country has become an example of how authoritarian regimes can manipulate social media and suppress critical voices.

“In the Gulf, the stakes are so high for those who engage in dissent that the benefits of using social media are outweighed by the negatives, and in Saudi Arabia in particular,” Marc Owen Jones, a lecturer in the history of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula at Exeter University in Britain, said to The New York Times in 2018.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, other governments and political entities have also attempted to exert influence on Twitter.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, has accused countries such as China, Russia, Nigeria, and India of seeking to influence Twitter.

Recent disclosures have also revealed that Republicans and Democrats had made content-moderation requests to Twitter, with the previous management playing a critical part in suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.