LONDON (Reuters) - A court case in California shows how two employees exchanged Twitter users' data in exchange for money and influence from a representative at the Saudi royal court, according to a report by the Middle East Eye website.

In her report, Dania Akkad said the two were former Twitter employees and had close ties to Saudi Arabia.

The report shows that the FBI agent, "Letitia Wu," entered in late October last year the home of US citizen Ahmed Abu Amo, a newly constructed city of Seattle, Washington, northwestern United States.

According to a lawsuit filed a few days ago in a California court, Abu Amo used his Twitter post to spy on Saudi dissidents in 2015, commissioned by an official representative at the Royal Court.

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Bribes and gifts
She adds that Abu Amo received a gold watch worth $ 20,000 and at least 300,000 officials, thanks to his efforts, and that these funds were sometimes channeled through a Lebanese bank account belonging to a relative, distributed in the form of initial payments related to the new house. .

The article explains that Abu Amo told the FBI agent that he had already searched for the details of a Saudi Twitter user named "User I" and was identified by the Washington Post as a "diligent", an anonymous Twitter user who was known to have published a forerunner regarding Saudi Arabia.

However, Abu Amo admitted only to receiving $ 100,000 for his consultations, that the watch was "plastic" and worth only $ 500, and that he presented a copy of a $ 100,000 bank transfer receipt sent by the official representative.

These are just details of the 26-page complaint filed against Abu Amo and two other Saudi nationals, Ahmed al-Mutairi and Ali al-Zubara, raising concerns about the degree of protection provided by Twitter to user data.

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Director tense
The writer adds that Abu Amo was the director of media partnerships on Twitter, and Zubara, one of the architects of the company site, describes him as a volatile person flexible and that he is willing to share potentially destructive information about dissidents and others with the Saudi government in exchange for money, privileges and influence Insiders from within the royal family are exaggerated.

In a direct message on Twitter, Abu Amo told the Saudi official that "both proactively and reactively, we will eliminate the sources of evil." While Abu Amo appears to have been largely directed by the official representative, the Zubara spy project was run by al-Mutairi, who, according to the complaint, described himself as an advisor to "a top-ranking figure in the Saudi royal family or the Al Saud."

In May 2015, al-Zubara wrote a letter to his wife saying that al-Mutairi had contacted him and told him that the Saudi royal court official wanted to meet him "where he is at the moment," explaining to his wife that he was then outside the capital, Washington.

According to the complaint, Zubara spent about seven hours in a house in Fairfax, Virginia, rented by Saudi officials, and that a week later, he retired for a continuous period of seven months, during which he was able to access the data of more than 6,000 Twitter users, where he exchanged information Regular with Mutairi.

Proactive information
The complaint notes that Saudi Arabia offered at the time about $ 1.9 million for "information that would pre-empt and avert terrorist attacks."
After returning to Saudi Arabia last July, al-Zubara wrote a detailed memo demanding additional compensation for his efforts, such as becoming a member of a royal court charity to help with an undisclosed case involving his father.

According to the complaint, Al-Zubara resigned from his Twitter account and sent him via e-mail and traveled to Saudi Arabia where he began working for the Saudi representative's charity organization, as well as working on the Mutairi team, and monitoring and controlling websites for Saudi Arabia. He never got a golden watch.