Former Twitter employee sentenced to more than three years in prison for spying for Saudi Arabia
Source: NBC News
A former Twitter employee found guilty of spying on users on behalf of the Saudi royal family has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Ahmad Abouammo, a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen who helped oversee media partnerships for Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa, was part of a scheme to acquire the personal information of users, including phone numbers and birth dates, for a Saudi government agent. He was sentenced Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The Justice Department has said it believes that another former Twitter employee accused of accessing user accounts and a man accused of helping the Saudi government with the scheme have fled to Saudi Arabia to evade American authorities.
The Saudi government severely penalizes anti-government expression on social media sites like Twitter. In April, courts sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi citizen and 34-year-old mother of two children, to 34 years in prison for tweets protesting the government.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/former-twitter-employee-sentenced-three-years-prison-spying-saudi-arab-rcna61384
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