Al-Ahmed v. Twitter, Inc.

District Court, N.D. California·Decided January 3, 2023·No. 3:21-cv-08017·Unknown

Opinion

ALI AL-AHMED, Case No. 21-cv-08017-EMC

Plaintiff, ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT v. TWITTER’S MOTION TO DISMISS

TWITTER, INC., et al., Docket No. 62 Defendants.

Plaintiff Al-Ahmed is a critic of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“KSA”) who has been granted asylum in the United States. Between 2013 and 2015, two of Twitter’s (now former) employees accessed user information without authorization and provided it to KSA government officials. The employees were indicted in 2019. On October 13, 2021, Al-Ahmed sued the former employees and Twitter. Specifically, Al-Ahmed sued Twitter for violating the Electronics Communications Privacy Act (“EPCA”); the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”); the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”); California’s Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”); breach of contract; intrusion upon seclusion; unjust enrichment; promissory estoppel; negligence; negligent hiring, supervision, and retention; civil conspiracy; and replevin. See Docket No. 1 (“original complaint”). In Al-Ahmed’s First Amended Complaint, he adds claims for breach of the duty of loyalty, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, an additional UCL claim, and interference with prospective economic advantage. See Docket No. 55 (“FAC”). Notably, Al-Ahmed does not add a claim under the Lanham Act, for which he was granted leave to amend after this Court led to the KSA targeting him and those around him. Furthermore, he alleges that Twitter’s suspension of his account in 2018 punishes him—the victim—and demonstrates that Twitter was complicit in their former employees’ conduct, or at least that Twitter ratified their conduct. The Court dismissed Al-Ahmed’s first complaint with leave to amend. See Al-Ahmed v. Twitter, Inc., No. 21-CV-08017-EMC, 2022 WL 1605673, at *5 (N.D. Cal. May 20, 2022). He filed an amended complaint. See FAC. Pending now is Twitter’s motion to dismiss Al-Ahmed’s FAC. See Docket No. 62 (“Mot.”). Twitter argues that (1) Al-Ahmed lacks Article III standing, (2) his claims are barred by the statute of limitations, (3) he does not plausibly plead that Twitter is vicariously liable for its rogue employees’ acts on behalf of the KSA, (4) the Community Decency Act (“CDA”) immunity bars many of his claims, (5) Twitter’s Terms of Service (“TOS”) bars many of his claims, and (6) individual actions fail for numerous claim-specific reasons. The Court only addresses Article III standing, the statute of limitations, and CDA immunity because each of Al-Ahmed’s claims fail for one of these three reasons. A. Factual Background Al-Ahmed alleges as follows in his FAC: Al-Ahmed is one of the leading critics of the KSA who resides and has been granted asylum in the United States. FAC ¶ 17. Between August 2013 and December 2015, Twitter employees accessed user data without authorization and provided the data to KSA government officials. Id. ¶¶ 22–23. Twitter failed to detect these breaches for more than a year. Id. ¶ 26. Al- Ahmed’s Arabic Twitter account, which has over 36,000 followers worldwide, was one of the accounts breached during this time. Id. ¶ 21. Al-Ahmed contends that Twitter’s conduct resulted in the compromising of his private information, including his “email addresses, contacts, phone numbers, birth dates, and internet protocol (“IP”) addresses;” and his “Tweets, private messages, direct message, online chats, friend requests, file transfers, file uploads, and file downloads.” Id. ¶¶ 24, 79. He also alleges confidential information provided by his followers and journalistic sources was compromised. Id. ¶ 4. Al-Ahmed alleges his private information was used by the attempting to kidnap and kill him on multiple occasions. Id. ¶ 18. Al-Ahmed alleges his followers on Twitter and those who otherwise contacted him using Twitter, have disappeared, been arrested, or have been executed. Id. ¶ 27. Examples of such third-party harms include the jailing of Saudi dissident Abdullah al-Hamid, whom the KSA jailed in 2013, and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which Al-Ahmed alleges was not uncoincidental to the KSA’s espionage against Twitter. Id. ¶¶ 27, 57. According to the FAC, “the KSA managed to fully silence Al-Ahmed when [Twitter] . . . suspend[ed his] Arabic Twitter account, without explanation, warning, or justification. Id. ¶ 28. On November 19, 2019, the two Twitter employees allegedly responsible for hacking Al- Ahmed’s account were indicted for acting as agents of the KSA. Id. ¶ 7. Defendant Ahmad Abouammo (“Abouammo”) was the Media Partnerships Manager responsible for the Middle East and North Africa region at Twitter. Id. ¶ 5. Defendant Ali Hamad A. Alzabarah (“Alzabarah”) was a Site Reliability Engineer whose responsibility was maintaining Twitter’s hardware and software to ensure uninterrupted service. Id. ¶ 6. 1. Twitter’s Notice On or about December 11, 2015, Twitter sent the following notice to the users whose data was accessed by Abouammo and Alzabarah:

Dear @{{screen_name}}, As a precaution, we are alerting you that your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors. We believe that these actors (possibly associated with a government) may have been trying to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses, and/or phone numbers. At this time, we have no evidence they obtained your account information, but we’re actively investigating this matter. We wish we had more we could share, but we don’t have any additional information we can provide at this time.

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Al-Ahmed v. Twitter, Inc., (N.D. Cal. 2023).

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