those places that need it most are most often the poorest, so they'd have a hard time affording any of this technology even if it wasn't outlawed. Remember last fall when the Taliban threatened to execute anyone caught with a satellite cell phone because some of their people were spying for the US?

There's also the basic problem that they may not even know the technology exists because it is so far removed from their daily lives. I remember reports around 1971 about the newly discovered Tasaday Tribe (later said to be a hoax but we didn't know that at the time) who were said to have no comprehension about the US sending men to the moon. One fundamental problem was that the tribe supposedly lived so deep in the jungle that they'd never seen the moon through the jungle canopy. Even if the Tasaday were a hoax (and there is still some doubt about that), the story serves to illustrate the point that if you don't know something exists, odds are you won't go out of you way to acquire it.

In a repressive country, freedom of information is a closely guarded commodity for the chosen few. This led Jerry Pournelle to predict the collapse of communism in the early 1980s. His contention was that in order to modernize their economies, communist countries would have to allow computers and communications services. However, doing so would weaken the government's ability to control the population. Remember, at the time owning a memograph machine without a license was a serious criminal offense.