back to article No woman, no drive: Saddo hackers lob Android nasty at Saudi women's rights campaign

Reactionary hacktivists have brewed up a strain of Android malware targeted against the Alsharif campaign, which encourages Saudi Arabian women to defy their country's ban on female drivers. Women have long been effectively banned from driving in the Middle Eastern kingdom, thanks to local interpretations of Islamic customs …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Saudi driving test.

    My cousin passed his about 5 years ago, sounds about the same, think he may of had to turn the car as well, but that was pretty much it.

    1. Psyx

      "At the time your correspondent, then a young trainee telecoms engineer, spent five months on secondment to Bahrain in the late '80s, the Saudi driving test purportedly involved driving five metres forward and five metres in reverse – together with the payment of a modest bribe (baksheesh). It's unclear how far things have moved along in the 25+ years since."

      It's now 100m forward, reverse into a parking bay and a bottle of Black Label.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Black label

        Standard for a serious bribe around South Africa iss Blue Label

        1. theblackhand

          Re: Black label

          I think Black Label is just for day-to-day bribes.

          For more serious stuff, taking a prince out for lunch and buying a Mercedes convertible for afters makes getting expense claims approved hard...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        No, even simpler, my Saudi driving license in the 80's was 'just issued' - no test needed, maybe a minor Prince was invoked? I therefore learned how to drive in Riyadh, Al Kharg, Abha's Jabel Feefa & illegal-ish border crossings into Yemen (as previous to the Saudi D/L I didn't even have one in the UK!)

        I urge the ladies of Al mumlikatillarabiatillsaudia not to bother driving in KSA - it's too bloody dangerous even without the local jihadists/mutaween(المتطوعين) getting on your task!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      He may HAVE had...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A Call to action

    One has to sympathise with Saudi men - having to deal with these uppity women who want to lead free independent lives instead of being thoughtless baby making machines. it must be such hard work beating up your wife every night.

    Have the Saudi authorities considered a policy of mass lobotomisation for their women folk? That way women would be happy to sit around having babies and doing whatever they are told. There is, of course, no need to lobotomise the men-folk as it would make no difference what so ever.

    1. Bumpy Cat

      Re: A Call to action

      Far better to send all the women into exile. In one generation the Saudi problem will be solved.

    2. Psyx

      Re: A Call to action

      "Have the Saudi authorities considered a policy of mass lobotomisation for their women folk?"

      I believe Pakistan and Afghanistan are trying a trail scheme called "shoot girls who go to school", which is half-way to being the same thing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A Call to action

        Thank you to Psyx for the valuable input in highlighting the “shoot girls who go to school” policy of the Taliban. It is certainly a much cheaper alternative than mass lobotomisation and worthy of consideration by any misogynistic twats who don’t want their women to think. I can’t help thinking that there must be a less messy alternative.

        I think it is a given that dick heads like the one singing in this video will only ever have a wife by virtue of an arranged marriage. Could I suggest that all idiots like these be married off to Rubber Dolls? Rubber dolls never want to drive and do not answer back in inappropriate manners to their men folk. Best of all, the genes of these hooligans will not be propagated to the next generation.

        1. Peter Simpson 1
          Facepalm

          Re: A Call to action

          "I think it is a given that dick heads like the one singing in this video..."

          Satire? We've heard of it...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: A Call to action

            Fair comment - should do more background.....

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: A Call to action

            It's a fair cop gov!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Mrs

    She borrowed my car last week and it now needs bodywork. I wonder if the Saudis are on to something ?

    1. Anonymous Coward 101

      Re: The Mrs

      Ba-dum cha!

      And that's not the worst of it - you need to get new shackles in your kitchen after she broke free of them!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Malware?

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/malware

  5. Jugernautilus

    Nasty petty little bunch of medieval knuckledraggers. But they buy lots of weapons from us so hey were all friends here.

    1. Elmer Phud

      "But they buy lots of weapons from us so hey were all friends here."

      No they don't

      They buy police enforcement equipment from us.

      And they certainly don;t buy any 'interrogation' gear to use on the foreign workers, either.

      Honest, guv.

      1. Psyx
        Happy

        "No they don't"

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Yamamah_arms_deal

        Your petrol tank disagrees!

  6. gurugeorge

    test

  7. oldcoder

    There WAS a female driver in the past...

    Almost got arrested .. once.. for stealing a car. As soon as they called her office the ARAMCO exec told them she was a princes security administrator...

    1. Psyx

      Re: There WAS a female driver in the past...

      It's actually perfectly legit for women to drive on private property, such as compounds, or within ARAMCO.

  8. gurugeorge

    I'm actually writing a book now and thinking of the title. It kind of

    has a bit to do with this issue. Thoughts of titles are:

    Don't drink red bull

    how I got out of mad

    The illusion of choice

    Why women shouldn't drive

    Another title was "Imperfect beings", on how simple things like a cold

    or a fever kills us… After being an engineer for a while (first a

    computer engineer, then a coder, banker, then a biomedical engineer,

    and now studying medicine 16 years later) I was fascinated by how

    simple things cause almost avalanche chain reactions that eventually

    kill us. Almost everything is like this and medicine. Heart attacks,

    strokes, & pulmonary embolism, are just tiny clots, yet a simple

    filter we wouldn't have those things… You would think we would have

    evolved this over millennia and we haven't. What I found working with

    one of the most advanced interventional radiologists in the country ,

    Was that our most advanced techniques in live with fluoroscopy guided

    interventional radiology, and minimally invasive surgery, will

    basically using balloons and pipe wire, and in many ways less

    technically advanced than the techniques used to fix cars.

    When you read about things like coronary angioplasty, endovascular

    aneurysm repair, percutaneous coronary intervention, they sound

    scientific and technically challenging, but actually you're fishing

    out a clot with a hook, pressing the button to release once basically

    a slinky with a cloth around it, and it replaces an aneurysm, or

    pressing a button to inflated balloon. All this is done with a piece

    of plastic tubing with a kinked end, you twist to go left and right,

    but they are called fancy names.

    The technology is very simple. There's a lot more could be done, very

    quickly, if more minds were put to this. I would say we are 50 years

    behind where we could be today.

    It's like the hot girl phenomenon, the nerds don't approach to the

    hottest girl in the bar because they think someone better has already

    tried it.

    Yes we have death panels in the uk. We deem a maximum fiscal value an

    assign it to a persons life for one year. The Republican death panels

    were anti-Obama care were not making that up. Then actually happens. I

    know many would-be numbers panels for local primary care trusts. But,

    there are no preexisting conditions, not one prson without completely

    free access to doctors, GPs and specialists. Everyon has that baseline

    care. If you're can afford it the upper limit doesn't apply to you.

    You can pay for private care, as 97% of GPs do.

    Quite a lot of medicine we can solve if only we had the tools. We do

    quite a lot with the crudest of tools. Just Google autoimmune

    conditions, from psoriasis to SLE, to autoimmune anything, hepatitis,

    multiple sclerosis etc, our body starts attacking itself. It's like we have an imperfect fail safe

    system that starts deleting critical data when there is a virus,

    leading to system shut down. Many of the drugs we give actually

    REDUCE our immune system rather than support it!

    How is this perfect? Not irreducible complexity, intelligent design

    perhaps. Yet, giraffes have 7 cervical vertebrae, as do humans. At

    months of gestation it's almost impossible to tell the difference

    between a baby fish and a baby human boy (or girl). That's as much

    proof of evolution as it is of intelligent design, a common creator.

    BUT if we were designed so intelligently why can we save someone's

    life by giving them poison (cancer), using a fishhook (pci, used in

    all heart attacks), using a bit of cloth (EVAR with interventional

    radiology).

    IF we were made by an all good, all knowing creator there is only one

    explanation for the design flaws within our bodies and systems. We

    must assume they were design flaws, hence our creator was not perfect.

    Or 2, the flaws were there to punish, teach us a lesson, in which case

    not all good.

    Why does god bless some and not others? Why have we (colonisers)

    benefitted so much from slavery and genocide? for our evils surely we

    should have been condemned?

    But we are still of the richest nations, built on the broken backs of

    slaves, as Rome and Athens are incredibly beautiful, again on the

    backs of pillaging and slavery. Why is it that in one of the richest

    nations, 30% of children are uninsured, because of a broken system

    where a weeks hospital stay costs the same as a house? And yet this

    broken system is the reason we have progress in the world, because

    they are the only people that can afford to buy new developments. I

    know this from working in academic biomedical engineering Oxford,

    while the NHS would go for the lowest bidder, the private market in

    the States meant that they would go for the best. We didn't even

    bother marketing new technology in the UK, it was pointless as there

    was no market for it. Without Americans buying it, it would not exist.

    There's a kid I study with who grew up on a houseboat, she didn't have

    electricity, and the careers adviser in her school didn't know what

    subjects of grades were needed for medicine. She got into medicine and

    was the first in her school to do so for a generation. There are many

    schools were not one child goes to Oxbridge or medicine. Yet, if you

    tax dodge, scam around edges and send your kid to the Westminster

    School you have a 50% chance of getting to Oxbridge. The system is

    designed so that those that push the limits of social morality and

    acceptability get ahead.

    I was born in London, but grew up in an Islamic dictatorship, in

    Dubai. I came to England and found myself restricted my freedoms

    curtailed. There were 11 PM closing times back in 98, yet in Dubai you

    could drink all night. However, to buy a car from an off license you

    needed a license!

    my point about women driving was that perhaps we have to consider it

    more carefully? I think it's appalling that women can't drive in saudi

    but the point is the are restricting women's freedom from the

    stability of society. I thought this was nonsense, yet as I've grown

    older I wonder if this is a fallacy?

    Why is it, that with sexual freedom has come the end of family? Post

    sexual revolution divorce rates skyrocketed. Why is it that women are

    twice as likely (66 vs 33%) to initiate divorce, and 90%, i.e. nine

    times more likely in college educated couples.

    The rates of cheating, even the men are often blamed, are equal, in

    fact, women are slightly more likely to cheat than men.

    Women are more likely to benefit from a divorce, much more likely to

    have the children, and also more likely to reap financial benefit from

    a divorce. I'm not suggesting a system where we go back to Victorian times when

    women are not equal, because in many cases I'm sure they deserve it,

    but rather a more equal system of marriage with higher penalties for

    divorce.

    Women are dumb, perhaps not as dumb as men but they are just as easily

    manipulated into bed. By the age of 27 I'd hooked up with about 10,

    perhaps average. Being a computer nerd I wasn't good at getting laid.

    I started looking to psychology when I was single, and played and

    exaggerated caricature of a sociopath, occasionally even head-butting

    people for arguing with me in bars. Within 36 months I hit triple

    digits. It became so routine was boring. I'm 5"9 and stocky. I'm not

    good looking. I had no idea what these women so angry, but often and

    walk up to them and say hi. That was my line. If any male friends

    tried to interrupt me I would look at said friend, hold gaze for an

    uncomfortably long couple of seconds, and say can't you see I'm having

    a conversation? occasionally I had to wait my hand and tell them to

    jog on. Rarely it came to blows. But I remembered every night, and

    have a few broken ribs a fractured clavicle, and a lot of stories left

    from those days.

    The problem is really that 50% of college educated women don't have

    children now in london. That leaves a lot of men without options.

    We are losing 50% of our gene pool, 50% of our brightest and smartest,

    while breeding idiots ..l in fact it's devolution.

    Why is it that in every war we have advanced technologically beyond

    what was capable before? Is this our natural state? Does our

    aggressiveness (and laziness) make us smarter? Dishwashers, freezers

    micowaves, cars elevators, phones, US inventions popularised in US.

    Why is it that if I act like an agressive sociopath I'm more likely to

    get laid? They've demonstrated the same behaviour and preferences in

    chimps, but surely a bunch of female oxford medics & phd students

    would have evolved from chimps? Apparently not, despite why they may

    say. With alcohol, and lowered inhibitions, few oxford phd girls care

    how many papers you've published, but if youre on the rowing team, or

    can knock a guy out with one punch you're hot shit.

    Come the morning, thier preferences may have changed. But alcohol

    brings out the "real, unfiltered" you. Why are we like this? Why do

    most women end relationships when they force men into them in the

    first place? Why is it than in an Islamic dictatorship like Saudi or

    Afghanistan, families are more stable? Why does china, do better than

    a western democracy? Freedom, choice, that we have isn't always good.

    We have chosen to be retards, just look at people voting against

    obamacare when they are the people who would benefit from it.

    I want to set up something, a "masculinism" movement perhaps, to bring

    equality into marriage, and reduce fuel taxes.

    Fucking hell that was a rant. I think I need to write a book, obviously Id proofread it :-)

    1. Graham Marsden
      WTF?

      @gurugeorge

      Are you friends with amanfrommars1?

    2. Red Bren

      I preferred the brevity of your previous post...

    3. tony2heads

      hottest girl in the bar

      I might be unusual here but I prefer a combination of intelligent & hot enough over the hottest. And NOT a vain 'princess' type.

      Perhaps there is some deep seated urge in me to have intelligent offspring rather than dumb (female or male) blonds.

      1. bigtimehustler

        Re: hottest girl in the bar

        This is of course a pretty crass assumption that the hottest girl can't also be the most intelligent, looks have nothing to do with intelligence at all, so they are spread equally between good looking and ugly people. Of course, finding yourself an intelligent girl who is also the hottest in a bar, may be above your skill... ;)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: hottest girl in the bar

          I don't think the original comment made that assumption, it just stated if there is a choice he'd prefer the person with brains over all looks.

          Have you got any evidence to back up your statement that there is no correlation between looks and intelligance on average and that they are spread equally?

          The probability of a person being considered 'hot' doesn't just depend on their natural beauty, but also their skills in artificially improving their 'hotness' which probably increases if they spend more time trying to achieve that look - eg. spending lots of time looking at fashion magazines, practicing in the mirror, elaborate skin care routines etc. I've not got the evidence but I'd have a suspicion more intelligent women would have other interests to occupy themselves and also would realize looks aren't everything so spend less time on perfecting their 'hotness' look (but perhaps their intelligence means they can spend less time as they are more efficient at it?).

          Similarly many learning disabilities are often strongly associated with particular physical characteristics so we know genetically there can be links between physical characteristics and how the brain processes information.

          I've no idea if either of these end up affecting the distributions of intelligence between 'hot' and 'less hot' people, just that we can't actually assume that they are spread equally.

    4. Anonymous Coward 101

      I'm not normally a grammar Nazi, but there is a split infinitive on line 33 of your posting.

      1. Mike Flex

        "there is a split infinitive on line 33 of your posting"

        The fact that the posting extends to (at least) 33 lines is a bigger problem.

    5. Psyx

      "I'm actually writing a book now and thinking of the title. "

      How about:

      'Care in the community through my own eyes'

      Or maybe

      'Under the tin-foil hat'

    6. Michael Thibault

      @gurugeorge

      What a ride that was!

  9. Charles 9

    I'm rather surprised the malware didn't take their work to its logical conclusion: request network or GPS location and text the phone's location to the authorities as the location of a conspirator.

  10. Michael 28
    Devil

    But.But.But.....

    WHO.....organizes the school run? Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Only under Islam

    Of course it couldn't happen here, we need our wives to drive us home from the pub.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Only under Islam

      In the case of Islam, it's actually TABOO to drink alcohol, removing that convenient excuse for the wife.

  12. Olivreghw

    Fucking hell... that's a crazy video song... Those guys did quite a good job on the singing and lyrics...

    Too bad it's for promoting their middle-age way of thinking.

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