eGovernment App That Allows Men To Track Their Wives And Daughters In Saudi Arabia

Absher is an e-Government portal for the Saudi Arabian citizens to apply for birth certificates, passports and to pay traffic fines among other things. The portal can be accessed through the Absher app which is available on both the Google Playstore and the Apple App Store.

The other thing it does

Men can configure Absher to set limits to where their wives and unmarried daughters can and cannot go. The unmarried daughters can be minors or adults, Absher doesn’t care.

When the wife or daughter uses her passport at an airport or at a border crossing, the man gets an SMS message.

Apple and Google under fire

Politicians in America are putting pressure on Apple and Google to ‘stop promoting’ the app. United States Senator Ron Wyden wrote to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai the respective CEO’s of Apple and Google asking them to remove the portal from their stores.

Apple is selling itself as a privacy sensitive company

This issue could be exactly the opposite of what Apple Inc needs right now as they keep pushing the narrative that they are all about privacy and security.

Both companies have policies on what type of apps can and cannot be allowed on their platforms. Policing such is not always easy and Google particularly relies on it’s community of users to flag any inappropriate apps.

This is not strange in Saudi Arabia

So the app is not really introducing anything new to Saudi Arabians. The law there has always required women to have permission from men (husbands and fathers) to travel. This permission could be given on a physical form before. The app only makes the process smoother.

The folks giving pressure on Apple and Google are not denying that this system already existed, they are just saying Google and Apple should not be accomplices to such. What do you think? Should Google and Apple take down an app that has useful government services because they have different moral views than those in Saudi Arabia?