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A separate US #civil #lawsuit accuses the #platform, at the time led by #JackDorsey, of enabling #SaudiArabia’s #HumanRights #abuses against its users. The case comes from the sister of a fmr aid worker, #AbdulrahmanalSadhan, whose anonymous parody account… mocking the country’s govt earned him 20 yrs in #prison. But it connects his fate to a pattern of behavior that includes the kingdom’s installation of #operatives into #Twitter’s ranks to funnel to authorities private info on #dissidents.

#Twitter, the lawsuit alleges, ignored “red flags” related to the insider threat — & even neglected to prevent 1 of the accused #spies from accessing #confidential data after receiving a complaint from a target….
…what Twitter knew & when…will probably be resolved in court. But 1 data point from the lawsuit is immediately alarming: Twitter reportedly disclosed privileged #user info at #SaudiArabia’s bidding at a significantly higher rate than it accedes to demands from the US, Britain or Canada.

Many of these #subpoenas came in the form of so-called #EmergencyDataRequests —a mechanism #hackers have lately gotten into the habit of abusing to vacuum up #data from #technology cos outside of usual #review processes. Apparently, these requests were often approved w/in hours.
Why did #Twitter treat #SaudiArabia so generously? The answer, critics charge, is #money. One of the largest investors in the company is Prince #AlwaleedbinTalal, …whose $2B stake was purchased through SaudiArabia’s KHC.

Of course, it’s also possible that the answer is mere #negligence. But for all the #dysfunction of #Twitter in the #Dorsey days, at least back then the site had rules for it to fail to follow. All evidence suggests that #X in the #ElonMusk days is run mostly by its owner’s whim. And the renovated firm appears, unlike its former incarnation, to be accepting most every request from most every country to turn over #user #data.