The experts said that records showed that within
hours of receiving the video from the crown
prince’s account, there was “an anomalous
and extreme change in phone behavior” with
enormous amounts of data being transmitted
and exfiltrated from the phone, undetected, for
several months.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin
Farhan Al Saud, called the hacking allegations
“absolutely illegitimate.”
“There was no information in there that’s relevant.
There was no substantiation, there was no
evidence,” he told an Associated Press reporter at
the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“It was purely conjecture, and if there is real
evidence, we look forward to seeing it.”
Saudi Arabia is already under investigation in
the U.S. for another case involving Twitter. U.S.
prosecutors in California allege that the Saudi
government, frustrated by growing criticism of
its leaders and policies on social media, recruited
two Twitter employees to gather confidential
personal information on thousands of accounts
that included prominent opponents.
Bezos went public last February after allegedly
being shaken down by the U.S. tabloid National
Enquirer, which he said threatened to expose
a “below-the-belt” selfie he’d taken and other
private messages and pictures he’d exchanged
with a woman he was dating while he was
still married.
Bezos wrote in a lengthy piece for the Medium
that rather than capitulate to extortion and
blackmail, “I’ve decided to publish exactly what
they sent me, despite the personal cost and
embarrassment they threaten.” While he did