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An app connected to a database containing the details of a Kingdom’s women. The ability for men to track those women and stop them leaving the country with the tap of a phone. It sounds like

the plot of dystopian sci-fi movie, but for women in Saudi Arabia, it is reality. Absher, an app produced by the Saudi government, allows men in the country to do perfectly innocent civic

tasks like pay parking fines, register a newborn baby, or renew their driving license. But it also allows them to track the women under their guardianship and block their passports on a

whim. The app, the details of which were originally reported on by _Insider_, is available for free in the Apple iOS App Store, Google Play Store and for desktop. Its delightful features

include sending a text message to a male guardian whenever a Saudi woman uses her passport at an airport or border crossing point, and allowing that man to decide which airport a woman can

use. Should he suddenly change his mind, the woman can have her passport blocked in an instant, trapping her in Saudi Arabia. It makes it almost impossible for women to escape from a country

where they remain distinctly second class citizens, whatever Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman would like the West to believe. Saudi women can find themselves totally stuck in highly abusive

relationships, with the app used to block any bid for freedom. One woman told _Insider_ that she had long wanted to escape from her abusive family. Doing so took a year of planning. She

said that when Saudi women  “decide to leave, we decide to put our lives on the line,” explaining that “if we don’t succeed, our families are going to kill us. It’s shameful to have a

daughter leave.” It’s no surprise that one of the things she stole when she did finally flee, courtesy of a family holiday to Turkey, was her relative’s phone. Absher is a key hurdle to

women getting away from these terrible situations. It is repression backed-up not only by big government but, unwittingly or not, by big tech too. The companies provide the tools for this

kind of software to be made easily available. Absher  has been downloaded over a million times in the Google app store alone. Once details of Absher became more widely known in February, 14

Democratic senators wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google boss Sundar Pichai raising their concerns. They said: “Keeping this application in your stores allows your companies and your

American employees to be accomplices in the oppression of Saudi Arabian women and migrant workers.” Meanwhile, I’ve heard next to nothing from UK politicians. However, writing in the

Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi argued that “Absher isn’t the real problem here.” Instead, “the problem is Saudi Arabia’s abhorrent male guardianship system, under which women are treated as minors

and need permission from a man to do everything from renting an apartment to accessing healthcare.” Well yes, of course, that is the underlying issue. And it is vital that political leaders

from elsewhere put far greater pressure on the Saudi regime to change things. But until that happens, should the world’s most innovative firms facilitate such misogynistic practices? Claims

that removing the app  “could end up being counterproductive” and could actually mean women have less freedom, as Mahdawi reported feel like attempts to defend the indefensible. The

sentiments expressed by the US politicians are more along the right lines, but one cannot help but feel that it’s a rather paltry number of politicians getting behind the cause. Where are

all the Democrat women we were told stand up for their Saudi sisters? The tech bosses are not coming out of this all that well either. Cook told NPR that he hadn’t “heard about [Absher], but

obviously, we’ll take a look at it if that’s the case.” Apart from that, there has been barely a mention of it from Apple or Google. Absher is another example of tech companies being caught

between wanting to access new markets, and living up to the values of freedom and equality that they regularly purport to have. In this regard, you can put it alongside Google’s development

of a censored, Chinese state friendly version of its search engine. Whenever they are held accountable or criticised, for fake news or disturbing content, these tech giants, particularly

Google and Facebook, claim to be nothing more than neutral platforms. That argument gets weaker by the day. They cannot credibly claim to have created tools that have made them a lot of

money, and then walk away from the consequences. Tech companies have long been able to challenge politicians for power. Absher underlines once again that they need to learn to manage the

responsibilities that come with that.