Four years?
It took four years for this? Didn't Twitter notice someone popping the files?
Two now-ex Twitter employees have been charged with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia – after they allegedly leaked internal records for accounts linked to critics of the Saudi royal family, including the assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while working for the social network. A criminal complaint [PDF] filed in a US …
It sounds like their job included looking at specific user accounts and they made some attempt to limit their targets. Logically, Twitter should have had controls on even small numbers of accounts accessed, but I don't know the details of what these people were doing. If it involved something like trying to identify if users were bots or not, it's possible that the criminals hid their account sweeps in something like that, and removed the data they were interested in from that data stream rather than deliberately accessing the profiles. Given the article's figures of six thousand accounts accessed for a target count of thirty three, that approach might have been the one taken.
America can always triumph in the Loony Laws competition !
Just like the oft-mocked US Customs question: 'Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force ?...
' unregistered foreign agents'
"Excuse me, sir, my name is Billy Bunter, and I want to register in America as a foreign spy; please give me the proper forms..."
.
.
As for this case, it could be argued they were simple patriots to the Saudi state --- no matter one's opinion of that state --- I feel quite certain British nationals working in Germany c 1938 would be now applauded for sending back information on links between British proto-fascists and the Hitlerite state.
Firstly: How the hell can a wristwatch be worth $20,000? It's obscene. Yeah, I know it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it... and 'Veblen' goods. Blah.
Secondly: I don't care if the motivation was patriotism to the Saudi Kingdom or filthy lucre or anything else. The key point is surely that with enough motivation people's personal information can be extracted from social media systems and cloudy services (for example Uber with it's 'God View' access - later renamed 'Heaven View' - has a fine track record in this regard).
Over the past few years the news has been littered with stories of people being doorstepped by MSM reporters for expressing politically incorrect opinions on social media and some have even self-harmed after being confronted. If reporters can extract real addresses and contact details from social media when they want to then these systems must be as watertight as sieves.
$20,000 is cheap. Patek Philippe, Chopard and higher-end Breguet watches retail for at least 6 figures. And watches like that tend to be discrete, they are absolutely beautiful works of engineering, and they are a joy to wear. Not a criticism of your post, just a clarification. I agree with you on the rest of the post.
But what if your spouse is from a foreign country, surely pressure might be put on you then? Or perhaps one of your kids is involved with someone from another country? Or maybe they just try and bribe someone?
Proper internal security with auditing and someone actually reading and responding to the audit logs is the answer, not banning foreign hires.
At least the US government hasn't banned selling weapons to the Saudis, and then "accidentally" sold them anyway. "By mistake". At least three times.
After all, who among us hasn't accidentally written an illegal export license eh?
what goes round, comes round... Given how happy the US are to tap into phone calls made by their "strategic friends" in Europe, presumably their Saudi friends took notice and paid enough to gain access to that one, pesky twitter account run by their Top US Friend? I'll show them yours if you show them mine? :)
"Our company limits access to sensitive account information to a limited group of trained and vetted employees", really actually vetted?
Or more likely "sign this NDA and agree not to do bad stuff." Vetting foreign citizens in nearly impossible, because access to their criminal history is also impossible.
Never mind the fact that the labor shortage in California is so bad they'll take anyone with a pulse.
There was just a documentary in the US about this - on "Frontline".
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-crown-prince-of-saudi-arabia/
Seems the new crown prince was (is) looking for ways to finger many people as dissidents.
Not sure if they've got it region-locked but was interesting to watch, if almost 2 hours in duration.