Two former Twitter employees and a third man were charged in San Francisco Federal Court Wednesday with spying on Twitter users for the Saudi royal family, the U.S. Justice Department announced.  

The case reflected the wealth of data that tech firms compile on their users, including email addresses, payment methods and internet protocol addresses that can give up a user's location. And it also raised concerns about the ability of Silicon Valley to protect the private information of its users. 

According to the court filing, Ahmad Abouammo, 41, a former Twitter employee and U.S. citizen was charged with spying on the accounts of three prominent users and falsifying an invoice to obstruct an FBI investigation. He was arrested in Seattle the day before the announcement of charges.

Abouammo worked for Twitter as a media partnerships manager and illicitly accessed data for the Saudis after he met Saudi official Bader Al Asaker in London in late 2014. Asaker leads a charitable organization belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is referred to in the complaint as Royal Family Member 1.

The second former Twitter employee, Saudi citizen Ali Alzabarah, 35, was accused of accessing the personal information of more than 6,000 Twitter accounts in 2015 on behalf of the Saudi royal family. One of the accounts he spied on belonged to a prominent dissident, Omar Abdulaziz, who was close to Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and critic of Crown Prince Mohammed, who was killed and dismembered last year inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The murder sparked international condemnation and strained U.S.-Saudi relations.

Prosecutors said a third individual, Saudi citizen Ahmed Almutairi, 30, acted as an intermediary who arranged contact between the two Twitter employees and Saudi officials.

According to the complaint, Abouammo was paid over 300,000 U.S. dollars and received a Hublot watch worth more than 20,000 U.S. dollars for his work. Alzabarah's payment was not detailed, but the filing said he quickly fled to Saudi Arabia with his family in December 2015 after Twitter confronted him about his unauthorized accessing of user information for some 6,000 Twitter accounts. He, at the time, said he did so "out of curiosity."