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Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

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Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#21

Post by radiojasper »

jen729w wrote: post #14
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

> 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-...

There's a fascinating profile of the crown prince, 'MBS', in this week's Economist double summer edition. I have a print copy, paywalled link is: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/mbs-despot-in-the-...

doesn't seem paywalled to me, but maybe there's a limit on the amount of articles that can be read. Anyway: https://archive.ph/JQFiG

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#22

Post by Syonyk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

> 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-...

> What the fuck?! Sooner we can decouple from that regime the better in my book.

"The Saudis, a despotic, murderous regime who... er, what's that? Gas prices are where? The Saudis, a heroic, brave people, living in a wonderful country with a deep culture of..."

"Yeah, hey, buddy, pal, MBS-o, think you could maybe squeak out a couple more MBPD? Elections coming up and... oh... really? Few hundred thousand, tops? Well, I guess, see what you can do... thanks!"

sigh :(

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#23

Post by zip1234 »

sneak wrote: post #17
nullc wrote: post #2

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.

Apple has access to the plaintext of pretty much every iMessage and the vast, vast majority of iOS users' photo libraries. They are required to turn over data to the US federal authorities without a warrant (under FAA702), and they do this over 30,000 times per year per their own transparency report. The mind reels. Can you imagine how much this is used for blackmail, extortion, coercion, parallel construction, etc?

Is iMessage not end to end encrypted? Facebook Messenger has end to end encryption. How does Apple not?

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#24

Post by beachy »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #4

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?)

Perhaps it was explained to him that he better go down quietly or his loved ones might get bonesawed.

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#25

Post by dboreham »

josh2600 wrote: post #12
trhway wrote: post #7

Why would a high suit shmoozing media partnership manager have access to user info? Seems like an issue of data access at Twitter.

For a long time many social networks were just any employee god mode. Access controls are just not a priority while blitz scaling and then very difficult to patch on after the fact.

1. Pass law. 2. Put people in jail. Oh...wait this is America..

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#26

Post by adolph »

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...

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#27

Post by nradov »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #3

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.

Not to defend the incompetent jerks who run Twitter or anything, but only a complete idiot would have ever trusted them with private or damaging information (including metadata such as locations). Twitter never made any reliable, verifiable guarantees about security or internal controls.

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#28

Post by biztos »

jen729w wrote: post #14
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

> 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-...

There's a fascinating profile of the crown prince, 'MBS', in this week's Economist double summer edition. I have a print copy, paywalled link is: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/mbs-despot-in-the-...

I find it super fascination that this guy, as a strategic partner, is at the same time:

1) Completely out of his f---ing mind!

2) Indisputably important and in control.

3) Remarkably easy to please.

Now, sure, I could be wrong about any of these -- my sources of information are almost exclusively the US/EU press, which are not free of bias and might hold a globally minority definition of "truth."

But when you consider what's at stake, and which other famous defenders of Human Rights we're in bed with, I honestly can't understand why we (US/EU) are not working more actively with the most transparent one.

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#29

Post by mrtksn »

323 wrote: post #16

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 t…

Will the cops really come and arrest people on the spot for breaching internal company data access protocols?

I’m curious about it if the authorities act on it as an urgent situation.

Re: Former Twitter employee convicted of charges related to spying for Saudis

#30

Post by 323 »

mrtksn wrote: post #29
323 wrote: post #16

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 t…

Will the cops really come and arrest people on the spot for breaching internal company data access protocols? I’m curious about it if the authorities act on it as an urgent situation.

By cops I meant FBI/... And the way this is done is you notify the cops first and then coordinate with them if needed. It's not like Twitter learned about this 5 minutes before.
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