Ahmad Abuammo, a former Twitter employee, was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison after spying for a Saudi Arabian working family.
Abuammo, who has US and Lebanese citizenship, while working at Twitter was the person managing media cooperation with Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa.
Its original job was to find prominent figures from the Middle East and North Africa for Twitter to promote. But he abused his position.
His position was used to steal personal data from users, including telephone numbers and dates of birth, to then be given to Saudi Arabian intelligence agents and then get paid from them.
He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. He was actually found guilty last August, but this is the first time his sentence has been handed down, which is lower than the previous sentence, which reached 10 years, we were quoted as saying by NBC News.
Besides Abuammo, the US Department of Justice also believes that there are other former Twitter employees who also steal user data. But he managed to escape to Saudi Arabia to escape the pursuit of the authorities.
In 2019, the US Department of Justice charged Abouammo and another former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, with espionage charges. Then the indictment was extended in 2020 to Ahmed Almutairi, who is considered to be the mastermind of the action.
Both Almutairi and Alzabarah are currently wanted by the United States government.
Saudi Arabia is known as a country that is tough on "defamation" carried out on social media such as Twitter. In April, for example, they sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi citizen who protested strongly against the Saudi government on Twitter.