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Saudi Arabia's surveillance system tracks women who try to escape

 
 
 
lpetrich

lpetrich

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In George Orwell's dystopia "1984", he imagined everybody being watched by someone with surveillance TV systems. That has a problem: who will do the watching? But artificial-intelligence technology is gradually catching up and making complete surveillance possible. Like this: In China's Xinjiang, surveillance is all pervasive | China | Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia is now doing it, with the lower-tech expedient of checking the use of ID cards and the like. One does not need much AI for that, it must be noted. Saudi Absher site lets men control women's travel, stop them escaping - INSIDER
  • Saudi law says every woman must have a male guardian, who has enormous power over her life and travel.
  • The Saudi government has digitized parts of the guardian system, letting Saudi men manage women's lives online.
  • INSIDER spoke with Shahad al-Mohaimeed, a refugee who navigated this system to flee her family in 2017.
  • Guardians can specify when and from which airports women can travel, effectively trapping them in Saudi Arabia.
  • The system includes a text-messaging system that alerts men when women use their passports. They are often able to catch them as a result.
  • The system has existed for years, but it has come under renewed scrutiny after the high-profile asylum claim of the Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed.
  • INSIDER also spoke with activists and women's-rights experts to highlight the full extent of the system.
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The article started with the escape of Shahad al-Mohaimeed from Saudi Arabia. Her family decided to vacation in Trabzon, Turkey, on the Black Sea. "Creeping barefoot out of the bedroom, al-Mohaimeed gathered her family's credit cards, keys, passports, and, crucially, their phones. This would slow them down, she thought, when they tried to follow her." Stealing a guardian's cellphone is a common expedient. She took a taxi to a nearby airport, but it only offered domestic flights and it would open too late. So she took another taxi to the border with Asian Georgia. She got in, and she made her way to the nation's capital, Tbilisi. She eventually ended up in Sweden.
Under her father's guardianship, she watched her teen brother spend a $1,600 monthly allowance as he pleased, while she begged for money to buy the most basic products. "I couldn't even buy anything for my period," she said. "It was my brother who paid for it, all the time, and he was younger than me."

al-Mohaimeed's mother couldn't access money she earned at her job either, she said. She didn't have a bank account. Her husband took it because, in his view, she wasn't worthy of having her own property. Reflecting on her past life, al-Mohaimeed said bluntly: "That's bulls---."
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The Absher, Arabic for "preacher", tracking system offers such familiar government services as updating vehicle registrations and paying traffic fines, but someone's guardian can use it to control which airports that one can depart from, and the system can send text messages to one's guardian about one's travels.

"At least 1,000 women try to flee Saudi Arabia each year, and experts told INSIDER the text alerts had enabled many men to catch family members before they make it out. "

Permissions include:
  • A single journey anywhere.
  • A single journey between two specific airports.
  • Multiple journeys.
  • Permission to travel until the passport expires (a maximum of five years).
Before Absher, Saudi women needed a paper consent form with a guardian's signature, known as a "yellow slip," to pass through customs.

Absher digitized the system, which can give a detailed readout of every journey somebody has made. (Men can view their own travel history as well as those of children and women in their family.)
Click to expand...
 
Saudi Arabia should always be prefaced with "Good friend of the US" Saudi Arabia.

Proof the US cares nothing about oppression.

Even if it claims to care when it wants to attack somebody.
 
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