IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 53

the inspection of the most popular
smartphone has shown only slight
differences in the offered functionalities and design regarding privacy
protection [6]. The analysis of the
circumvention tools that enable
privacy was divided in two categories, depending on the functionality they provide: 1) those that allow
text or voice communications to
be encrypted and transported; 2)
those where the OS is allowed
to use "standard circumvention
tools" that simply reroute the entire
Internet traffic, such as the Virtual
Private Networks (VPN) facility
relaying traffic to a location not
visible to the monitoring entity.
Although encryption is commonly
used as a part of this technique, it is
not always enabled in the handset
OS by default. The results of the
analysis held in an experimental
network environment for the four

smartphones are summarized in
Table I where each application is
assessed on a scale from 1 to 5 in
accordance with the provided level
of functionality (Security, Resilience, Usability).
The scores were derived from
the rules set by experts involved in
technical testing, and they run from
1 (bad and not existing) up to 5
(excellent). A "good" overall score
was awarded only when two or
more applications scored 4 points
(very good) in the same category,
and three other applications did not
score less than 3 points in any of
the categories. An "insufficient"
overall score was awarded when
there was no or just one application in a category or when applications only scored 1 point in any of
the categories. All other situations
were rated as "adequate." This
method allowed us to identify the

areas where specific applications
call for further development.
Among the four tested handsets,
Android ranked high in some of
the categories, but the overall winner was the Orbot application [7]
(based on Tor technology), [8] that
offered the best of breed censorship circumvention and user-identity anonymization options [9].
On the downside, this applications
has no equivalents in other operating systems, thus the users are
left with less secure or no common circumvention applications
to secure their communications.
IOS displays roughly the same
characteristics as Android, with
the exception that most tested tools
were either OS based or made by
independent developers.
Although the overall outlook
seems promising, concerns have
been raised about VPN technology,

In Your Opinion, How Does Your Country Filter or Monitor Mobile Internet Content?

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0

Other (Please Specify)
Trained Investigation Teams Responding to Complaints Only?
Commercial Agreements with Specialized Organizations?
Pro-Active Trained Investigation Teams?
Systemic Proactive Monitoring, Logging, and Analysis?
Sophisticated Communications Monitoring Equipment Managed by Trained Investigation Teams?
Close Collaboration with National Internet Industry?
Legislation Requiring Blocking/Monitoring with Limited Supervision?
Specialized State Agency Responsible for Communications Supervision/Regulation?
Fig.2. User understanding of who is responsible for the content blocking and traffic filtering.
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

|

WINTER 2014

|

53



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