Saudi Arabia pursuing fleeing women through IMEI tracking

Activists have disclosed that the Saudi government are pursuing women fleeing the country by tracking them using their mobile phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identity number. The data-point, IMEI, which is more commonly associated with the US military in targeting drone strikes, is able to trace a target within a few feet.

Business Insider has revealed four women’s accounts of how the Saudi government has, in some cases successfully, tracked them down after fleeing for a life outside of the country’s borders.

Early this year Saudi security personnel confronted the family of two defectors who were told to present the packaging of their mobile phones, while a third who was captured by the Saudi State, was informed her IMEI lead to her apprehension. A forth who narrowly avoided being repatriated to Saudi Arabia after fleeing to Australia revealed how her IMEI number was exploited by the Saudi State in an attempt to hunt her down.

The IMEI being harnessed is a 15-digit number unique to the individual phone and commonly written behind the battery or on the SIM tray. The fact that this data is stored on the handset as opposed to a replaceable SIM or chip leaves potential victims ever more precarious.

Women living within Saudi Arabia are faced with the dual obstacle of an Ideological patriarchy and sophisticated State apparatus. Despite King Salman’s 2017 order to abolish the ‘Unofficial’ Guardianship Rules that forbade women’s rights - and the historical lifting of a decades-long ban on female drivers in May 2018 - the strict interpretation of Shariah law and rigid traditional values on sexes still pervades within the Middle Eastern Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia acquiesced to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 2000 but only with the reservation stating that: “

“In case of contradiction between any term of the Convention and the norms of Islamic law, the kingdom is not under obligation to observe the contradictory terms of the Convention.”

In spite of this and the recent events that have unfolded surrounding victims of IMEI tracking, Saudi Arabia remains geo-politically indispensable and therefore an ally to the United States and the West. The United States has traditionally relied heavily on Saudi Arabia for oil, and while the U.S’ has sought for independency through shale under President Trump, Saudi Arabic remains a key player in the global energy market and still able to influence (sabotage?) the global economy should they feel left out in the cold.

Right now the United States is currently at internal loggerheads in Washington to define their stance on Saudi Arabia, with the Senate’s latest action being to block arms sales to the state in a bid to stem President Trumps $8 billion military weapons deal.

Similarly UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been ruled as ‘unlawful’ as it has emerged that UK-sold missiles were used by the Saudi-led coalition during the Yemen civil war that claimed the lives of 13,000 people according to UN sources. Accordingly to a new survey, half of the British public think trading should only be entertained with countries that have good human rights records.

Yet with emergent flashpoints unfolding with Iran, and present sanctions exacerbating regional stability, Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic ties with the United States look to allow the Saudi Arabic to continue pursing it’s questionable human rights record and the women who seek refuge from it.