7 December 2020

Authorities in Kazakhstan have in the run-up to next month’s parliamentary election mounted another drive to snoop on the public’s internet usage and limit access to online resources they deem suspect.

This control measure has been sold as a digital security initiative...

Sure enough, residents of the capital, Nur-Sultan, have begun complaining about problems with their internet connections and that they are unable to access popular social media websites...

This is only the government’s latest run at trying to steer internet users toward installing digital security certificates designed to generate detailed logs of what they are doing online. The last attempt came last year following a wave of unusually large anti-government protests in the wake of a much-contested presidential election, but it fizzled out amid much confusion and public indignation...

Last year’s snooping attempt also failed because of the reluctance of foreign tech giants to play ball. Google and Mozilla, for example, stated at the time that they had deployed technical solutions within their respective browsers to thwart the Kazakh government’s attempts to intercept traffic.