IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 56

frequency of privacy protection
application downloads, were also
considered as independent variables.
It was found that users' skills,
in addition to the developed market
and the wealth of the country are key
factors when it comes to understanding and recognizing privacy threats,
such as monitoring, interception,
and content blocking. The majority
of advanced and intermediate users
in the sample come from the countries with high mobile service penetration and high GNI. These users
are much more aware of blocking
and monitoring activities than less
skilled users from the less developed
and poorer markets. Advanced users
are also much more aware that the
communication monitoring activities are performed by state agencies,
compared to the beginner and intermediate users. Correlation between
religion and users' trust in the state
agencies (measured as a percentage of the Muslim citizenship) has
shown that this correlation is very
probable, which explains why in
the three wealthy Muslim countries
(Oman, Saudi Arabia, and to less
extend but significantly Azerbaijan)
users are more tolerant to censorship
and trust state agencies. China is an
exception, but this is explained by
market level development and the
affordability of the technology, as
China is the only country from those
studied with its own mobile technology manufacturers.

Greater Availability May
Correlate with User
Acceptance of ReligionBased Restrictions
With the results obtained from this
study we were able to conclude that
in countries where modern mobile
technology is affordable and is
freely offered to the citizens, some
strong restrictions and regulations
implemented by governments in
order to control Internet content and
traffic are more acceptable to users
when this is aligned with the dominant religion. In this situation, users

do not perceive the censorship as a
great evil and they believe that the
implemented regulation has protective purpose. On the contrary, in
slow-developing countries, where
modern technology is less affordable, the mobile market is strongly
controlled - if the regime adopts
strong traffic and content regulation,
the user community is not tolerant,
and faith in the state agencies is lost.
It should also be noted that in
countries where mobile markets are
strongly regulated, mobile handset
user security and safety strategies
are a challenging and complicated
issue. First, assessment of the most
popular handsets has shown that
security and privacy protection features are not present by default.
Recent reports in the media, after
the disclosure of the PRISM program, have shown that manufacturers have intentionally left some open
doors and various loopholes in the
IETF standards, allowing unnoticed
entrance of interception tools [13].
The disclosure of the privacy abuse
has consequences for a handset owner's habits, as they are aware of the
fact that their communication can
be seen/heard and recorded by nonbenevolent third parties. Privacy
protection becomes a difficult task
for the less-skilled handset owners.
Our study underlined several
similarities between the analyzed
regions and some cases in the EU
and the U.S. after the disclosure
of the PRISM activities. Skilled
and wealthier users from developed markets are better informed
about privacy threats, and in such
situations they normally demand
changes to existing regulations.
However, the level of trust
enjoyed by state owned agencies
differs from one region to another,
and such is the case with users
from Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of
Oman, Azerbaijan, and China. as
users in those countries trust their
state agencies and have more faith in
existing regulations. This is possibly
a matter of culture and religion.

Author Information
Cormac Callanan is with Aconite
Internet Solutions, Dublin, Ireland;
e-mail: cc@aconite.com.
Borka Jerman-Blažicˇ is with
Josef Stefan International Postgraduate School, Slovenia; Email:
borka@e5.ijs.si.

Acknowledgment
Assistance in collecting expert data
was provided by Freedom House
(FH) and the Broadcasting Board
of Governors (BBG). They had no
part in the preparation of this article or in the decision to submit this
article for publication.

References

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[8] B. N. Levine and C. Shields Hordesk, "A
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[9] "Mobile apps and code you can trust,"
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[10] RIM, Research in Motion/Blackberry,
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[11] A. Puder and O. Antebi, "Cross-compiling
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[12] "Global stats," Statcounter, 2012; http://
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[13] P. Rosenzweig, "The continuing struggle
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

WINTER 2014

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