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Apple, Google criticized for carrying app that lets Saudi men track their wives

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    1. Greg
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      It's an app released by the Saudi Ministry of the Interior which provides a tracking function and explicitly mentions that "you can safely browse your profile or your family members, or [laborers]...

      It's an app released by the Saudi Ministry of the Interior which provides a tracking function and explicitly mentions that "you can safely browse your profile or your family members, or [laborers] working for you, and perform a wide range of eServices online".

      Given the laws and regime of Saudi Arabia, this strongly implies that there will be an asymmetry in how it is able used by different family members (location data, appointment data, etc. flowing only one way). Add to this that Apple explicitly takes responsibility for operating a whitelist approach in their store, meaning (for better or worse) that the question of censorship in general has already been answered here, and I would say there's a circumstantial but very reasonable case to object to this specific app without catching location sharing as a whole.

      3 votes