Abdulrahman al-Sadhan broke the law and made a twitter account whose purpose was to attack and mock the Saudi government. He knew this was a crime in SA and did it anyway, apparently without basic precautions like using a VPN.

He got caught, arrested, and sentenced to 20 years.

He should be thankful they didn't chop him up.

Does anyone think that if the guy who runs the Putin mockery account: https://twitter.com/darthputinkgb was a Russian national and got caught, he wouldn't get thrown off the nearest balcony?

Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian state with no freedom of speech and no fundamental rights. The US allies with it because it's a useful counter to Iran, and it isn't America's job to force democracy and the Bill of Rights on everyone. If we did that, we'd have to start with the EU and it's lack of free speech.

Abouammo met al-Asaker in 2014 in London, where he was given a $20,000 watch. A week after returning to Twitter's headquarters, Abouammo accessed the system he used to verify users and obtained information about at least two Saudi dissidents, later passing the data to al-Asaker. That system, according to insiders who have used it, retains information such as email addresses, phone numbers and the latest log-in time – personal information usable to track a user in real life.

The only way to fix that is to ban twitter, reddit, and other things like facebook from requiring personal info like phone numbers.

In May 2015, and within the first week of arriving in San Francisco from Washington, D.C. where he met with al-Asaker, Alzabarah "began to access without authorization private data of Twitter users en masse." Over 6,000 users were compromised in six months, according to the FBI. 33 of those users, the Saudi government has already requested Twitter to provide their personal information through emergency disclosure demands.[13] Later in 2015, Abouammo departed Twitter for a position at Amazon in Seattle. Over the next two years, well over $300,000 in bank transfers were made from al-Asaker to Abouammo's various bank accounts.[14]

After arrival in Saudi Arabia, Alzabarah became the CEO of the Misk Initiatives Center, a branch of Mohammed bin Salman's Misk Foundation, which he created in 2011 and whose secretary-general was al-Asaker.

On November 5, 2019, as part of the complaint, federal warrants for both Ali Alzabarah and Almutairi were issued.[15] Both were accused of operating as undeclared agents of a foreign government.[18][19] On the same day, Abouammo was apprehended in Seattle, WA, and had his first federal court appearance in Seattle on November 6, 2019.[2]

The small time dude got caught and is facing decades in prison: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-twitter-employee-found-guilty-acting-agent-foreign-government-and-unlawfully-sharing

The big time dude is chilling and living the good life in Saudi Arabia because he got out before the slow FBI acted 4.5 years later.

NOW DO CHINA.

Maybe big tech shouldn’t be allowed to hire foreign nationals and should require a background check.