Want to know whether your wife, sister or daughter has left the county?

[Beorn]

There's an app for that.


Want to know whether your wife, sister or daughter has left the county? Well, in Saudi Arabia, there's an app for that. Reportedly, male guardians or mahrams in Saudi Arabia are now receiving text message notifications when their female charges leave the country unaccompanied. "iMahram", a friend of mine jokingly called it.
According to Wajeha al-Huwaider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wajeha_al-Huwaider), a Saudi female activist, when she left the kingdom for a holiday with her family, her husband received a text message from the foreign ministry notifying him that she had departed.
"It is sad how Saudis use technology in a way not intended to be used for," she told The Media Line (http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=29514). "In Saudi Arabia, technology brings more restrictions and misery. They use it to have more control over people's lives, especially women."


Source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/04/keeping-tags-text-women-saudi)

[nisse]

...and they are banning Blackberries because their incription is too strong and they refuse to provide the government (or is it the clerics?) with a back door.

Of course they are going to love iPhones and all their handy apps though :D