Would Kazakhstan like to cut itself off from the Web?

Lately Google has accused the country of trying to erect walls around the Internet within its borders. 

Of late reports have multiplied that Google is involved in a strugggle against the Kazakhstan government over this country’s authorities’ latest decision “to create limits to the Internet“. On first sight this doesn’t look good and even encourages comparisons with Iran’s plans to create an internal web of its own.

The tale starts on June 7th with an official Google announcement on its own blog, in which it stated that the Kazakhstan government is interested in putting physical limits on the net inside the country, this in the wake of a message the company received last month from the Kazakh Centre for Information Nets. The subject is a directive from the local department of communications, which stipulates that all sites with local adresses [kz.] should  be operated from  servers situated within the borders of the country, and that would include the local version of their search engine Google.kz. This means, that all this traffic would be routed to local servers, as opposed to the present state of things, in which searches on the local version of Google are treated by the firm without taking into consideration the whereabouts of the server, so as to assure the quickest possible answer.

The Google management  found itself, in its own words, in a position where it was forced to choose between capitulating to creating “limits on the internet”, or continuing to give efficient and fast service to the local population. Accordingly the company choose the free but slower soution of routing the search traffic from outside the state borders from Google.kz. straight to Google.com.

The announcement is seemingly based on the Directives by the Kazakh Ministry of Communications  from September 7th 2010,

while what triggered the Google announcement was probably the message from the the country’s Centre for Information Nets that from June 1st  2011 onwards all new domain names to be inscribed in the country will be operated by local firms only.

All this to be accomplished while continuing the support of domains which were acquired prior to that date.

The event has not merited almost any reference by Official Kazakhstan. Searching Twitter for Google.kz. we found recycled references to Google’s decision only, without any more information. On the Twitter account of Almaty Google Technology User Group we found two referrals to the subject: one from this group and containing the claim that there is no substance to the statement that Google had abandoned Kazakhstan, simply because it had never been there. Accoding to them the company has no official representation in the country other than a few servers on “Kaza-Telcom”, performing caching for UTube clips.

The notice added that “in principle the situation hasn”t changed much – we can still make use of either Google.ru or Google.com”.

The second notice on the subject held the opinion, that the Google claim refers to a directive which states explicitly that it does not apply to domain names acquired before the directive came into force and it is therefore neiter retroactive nor meant to include the domain Google.kz.

In its annual survey  the organisation “Journalists without Frontiers” ranked Kazakhstan 162nd out of 178 countries on its Freedom Meter. The organisation Freedom House has ranked it 172nd out of 196 on its Freedom of the Press Meter for the year of 2011.

This lack of freedom also finds its expression in the sphere of the Internet in the form of the closing of sites from time to time, chiefly information and opposition sites. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan is not among the nations which are defined as “the Internet’s Foes” in the world.

Is Kazakhstan then a focus of freedom of expression and democracy in this world? Absolutely not. Is she indeed interested in placing limits on the Internet within her realm? That is not clear for now. On the other hand it could well be that the motivation for this step by the Kazakh government comes from her will to improve her rip on the local Net and to enable her to to control its contents as well as to close down sites, according to her wishes and in times of need. In a way that would be like what we have witnessed in the case of the Blackberry all over the world about a year ago.

What remains fo us to be done is to continue and keep tabs on the events on this issue and on the future of the Internet in Kazakhstan.

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