Since Jamal Khashoggi's murder. my team's work was mostly focused on Jamal's vision, which was to reclaim the Arab public sphere. It just happens that the Arab public sphere was... Twitter. Here's a quick thread:
The Twitter spying scandal started long before Jamal's murder. The employees were found out and fired by Twitter. Twitter needs to let us know immediately what they did to ensure the spying stopped and if indeed it did stop or not, and how we can know.
Twitter also needs to immediately start treating Saudi Arabia not as a "market" but as a hostile country hell bent on hacking and manipulating its medium in any way, including arresting prominent tweeters, and torturing people to death for the crime of tweeting.
As I said earlier this year, Jamal started before his death three initiatives (that I know of) focused on Twitter. The"Bees Army" was only one of them. My team inherited the other two. Both of them are of sensitive nature and while they continue, we do not talk about them.
The fact that my team is undertaking high impact projects directly targeting the propaganda engine of the Saudi regime has costs. Death threats is one. Inability to fundraise normally is another (well, we can't reveal the details of the work for which we seek funding).
So here's another plea for help. Our team is independent and would like to continue to be. If you want to help the important work that we're doing, please pledge your monthly support here: patreon.com/kawaakibi
I'll end with this. To run ops of the kind the Saudi regime is running you need three efforts:
1. Cyber weapons capacity
2. Disinformation/propaganda capacity
3. Intimidation capacity
MBS has all three, a combination of bought & built.
1. Cyber weapons capacity
2. Disinformation/propaganda capacity
3. Intimidation capacity
MBS has all three, a combination of bought & built.
The information my team is sitting on constitutes an absolute scandal for the Saudi regime, the Twitter company, and... the Trump administration.
I'm living under police protection in Norway for good reason.
I'm living under police protection in Norway for good reason.
