A former Twitter employee, Ahmad Abouammo, was found guilty this week of spying for Saudi Arabia, which paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for providing regime critics’ private user information, including from anonymous accounts. The Justice Department charged another former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, for his role in the scheme, but Alzabarah, who performed website maintenance for the company, fled the U.S. for Saudi Arabia when Twitter confronted him for accessing the personal information of over 6,000 accounts. This espionage incident displays the lengths Saudi Arabia will go to in order to suppress citizens’ criticism and dissent.
This is not the first time dictatorships in the Middle East have manipulated technology to bolster their governments and limit freedoms. For instance, the United Arab Emirates frequently establishes obstacles to social-media access, imposes limits on specific content, and violates the rights of users. These measures are used to identify and quell dissent as well as persecute dissidents. Many of these measures were implemented in response to the Arab Spring uprisings, when protesters used social media to coordinate large-scale demonstrations. Autocratic regimes in the Middle East perceived the Arab Spring democratization movement as an overall threat to their governments and authority. They understood that social media was becoming a tool for mass mobilization and democratization; they countered this movement by using social media to identify regime opponents. Across the Middle East, nations have instituted vague cybercrime and anti-terrorist laws, which they use as cudgels to strike down civil-rights activists and human-rights supporters. The use of espionage within the Twitter company is simply the latest bold move.
Social media can be used as a tool for connection, information-sharing, and genuine learning. But autocratic governments can hijack social-media accounts and data for the purposes of censorship and repression. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the Middle East but is happening around the world. Social media, as a hub of free expression, is targeted by governments seeking to restrict such freedom.