The beginning of the era of mass surveillance: a smart city project in a small town in Kazakhstan

In a small town in Kazakhstan, the "smart city" experiment has some residents on their faces. But it also heralds the beginning of a new era of mass surveillance in the Central Asian country.

At first glance, Akol is no different from most other villages in Kazakhstan today: the rudimentary buildings, rusty iron gates and monotonous apartment buildings are reminiscent of the Soviet era and also reflect the uncertainty of the country's economic prospects. But on the outskirts of the village, on a pine-fringed hill, sits a large gray-and-white cube: a central network system that monitors the daily activities of the village's 13,000 residents through thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables, sensors and data terminals.

This is the command center of the Smart Aqkol project and a pilot research project on digital urban infrastructure in Kazakhstan. I was greeted here by Andrey Kirpichnikov, deputy director of the intelligence Akkule. Dressed in a black FILA tracksuit and sneakers, the Akol resident scanned his face as he stood in front of a console emblazoned with the Hikvision logo. The turnstile glows green for approval and then opens to let us in.

Kirpichnikov told me: "All our employees can use their unique facial IDs to enter the building. ”

He took me into a room with a large monitor showing a schematic map of the village. He explained that the data input and connectivity that makes up the smart Akol come in part from various devices such as solar panels, gas meters, GPS trackers on public service vehicles, and surveillance cameras. Analysts at the command center report their findings to the mayor's office, focusing on data such as energy use, school attendance and evidence from police investigations.

Pointing to the village heatmap on the big screen, Kirpichnikov told me: "I see great prospects for the work we are doing here. "As sensory input increases, their analytical abilities are constantly improving and are only going to get better. ”

"We're trying to make life better, more efficient, and safer," he explained. "Who would oppose such a project?"

Most of the housing and infrastructure in Akol is from the Soviet era.

The "Smart Akol" project demonstrates the economic prospects of Kazakhstan and the aspirations of its technocratic leadership. Speaking at the launch of the project in January 2019, then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev envisioned a future when government officials could use the connected municipal system to run Kazakhstan "like a management company." The smart city model is appealing to the leaders of the oil-rich country, which has struggled to modernize its economy and shake off its reputation for rampant government corruption. But analysts I spoke to said it was also a sign that Kazakhstan was moving to an exotic public surveillance system. During the Russo-Ukrainian war, Kazakhstan deepened its engagement with the East as a way to avoid dependence on its former colonial power, Russia.

Kazakhstan's smart city initiatives don't start from digital zero. The country has made great strides in the digitalization of public services and is currently ranked second among the countries of the former Soviet Union in the United Nations E-Government Development Index (Estonia ranks first, and its capital, Astana, has also become a regional fintech innovation hub. ）

It's not just government officials who want to use these systems. Erica Marat, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, said: "There is a lot of demand in the country, not only from the government authorities, but also from the middle class of Kazakhstan. In many Asian cities, smart city systems are thought to improve living standards and reduce crime. ”

They are also expected to increase the transparency of the work of public officials. Oyuna Baldakova, a technical researcher at King's College London, said: "The government wants digital platforms to overcome petty corruption cases. This would be a welcome change for Kazakhstan, which currently ranks 101st out of 180 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. ”

In addition to the town's main roads, many of Akol's roads remain unpaved

But Akol's pilot work doesn't quite fit these ambitious goals, at least not yet. Returning to the command center, Kirpichnikov gave a presentation on the reduction in violent and drunken crimes in Akol after the system was activated. But in a town where crime rates rarely exceed single digits, the change doesn't mean much.

To better prove this, the team showed me a video of the crime they recorded using the smart Aqkol surveillance camera system. In the first video, a man lifts another man off the ground, meant to show a violent assault, but it looks more like the iconic scene of Patrick Swayze lifting Jennifer Grey above his head at the end of "Hot Dance." In another painting, a man wields a Kalashnikov in one hand and holds a mobile phone to his ear in the other. In each case, brightly colored circles and arrows appear on the screen, highlighting "evidence" of wrongdoing captured by the camera, such as vandalized elevators and submachine guns.

The end of "Spicy Body Dance".

Kirpichnikov then led me into the "Situation Room" of the smart Akol, where 14 analysts sat in front of a giant LED screen tracking signals in the city. Rather than the tense atmosphere of the smart city "war room," the atmosphere here is more like a local bar, where analysts talk about their neighbors while watching their neighbors through the cameras of street cameras.

The interior of the "Situation Room" of the "Intelligent Akol". Photo courtesy of the author.

Kirpichnikov explained that residents can connect their gas meter with a bank account to set up automatic gas payments. This feature brings convenience to the smart village of Akol. Residents I spoke to were raving about the new payment system, and for years their only option was to queue up to pay, which often took them half a day.

More interestingly, to demonstrate the advantages of intelligent Akol analysis work, Kirpichnikov presented me with a recent finding: "We found that children in families with poor thermal insulation have a lower enrollment rate. Pointing to a purple gradient table showing the difference in heating levels across the town, he said, "We can improve school performance, health and living standards for residents simply by updating the aging heating system." ”

Kirpichnikov's words may be true, but leaving the clean and uncluttered digital interface, any Akol resident will tell you that poor insulation is a serious problem in most apartment buildings, especially in winter, when temperatures drop below freezing most nights. Broken windows are covered with only a thin layer of cellophane, which is nothing more than a common phenomenon.

While strolling around Akol, I was shocked by the unpaved roads and infrastructure outside the village's main road. Some street lights work, but others don't. The village's proudly public Wi-Fi seems to have a signal only near government buildings.

Despite the limited internet coverage, billboards with free Wi-Fi were hung all over the village.

There are also two so-called warm bus shelters in the village - heat lamps are installed in enclosed spaces to provide shelter for passengers waiting for the bus in the harsh Kazakh winter. These shelters should have Wi-Fi, mobile phone charging ports, and single-channel TVs. As I passed by one of the bus shelters, I came across an elderly resident of Akkule named Vera. "These things are gone," she said to me, waving her finger at the signs of destruction. "Now only the camera in the back is left. "

"I don't know why we need this mess here, because we barely have roads and running water," she said, sighing, adding, "Technology doesn't make better people." ”

Vera is not the only one to criticize. Smart Akol brings well-designed digital coverage to the village, but it is clear that Akkul still lags far behind modern Kazakh cities such as Astana and Almaty in terms of basic infrastructure. A local resident named Lyubov Gnativa opened a channel on YouTube about the lack of public services in Akkule and the failure of officials to meet these needs. Over the years, the local government has reported Gnativa to the police, accusing her of misleading the public.

A recent documentary filmed by RFE Radio, "I Love My Town, But It's Not Smart at All," also corroborated many of Gnativa's sentiments, including interviews with dozens of locals, drawing attention to water issues and the lack of insulation for many houses in the village.

But some residents said they were grateful for the system's contribution to public safety. Surveillance cameras now monitor the village's main thoroughfares from lampposts, as well as the interiors of public schools, hospitals, and municipal buildings.

"These cameras change the way people behave, and I think that's a good thing," Kirpichnikov said. He recounted the story of a local woman who was recently harassed on a public bench, noting that such commotion often escalated to crime in the past. "But the woman pointed at the camera, and the man looked up and was scared and walked away".

A middle-aged teacher named Irina told me that she feels much safer since the program was implemented in 2019. "I walk through a public park at night, where a lot of young men gather and it's scary," she said. "After the camera was installed, they never harassed me again.

A resident of Akol.

The project is the result of a collaboration between Kazakhtelecom, Kazakhstan's national telecommunications company, the state-backed mining company Eurasian Resources Group, and Astana-based tech start-up Tengri Lab. But the hardware is provided through an agreement under the Digital Silk Road program, which aims to wire the world in a way that tends to reflect the priorities of Eastern countries in terms of public infrastructure and social control. Intelligent Arkol uses surveillance cameras made by Dahua and Hikvision, two companies that have been heavily used and touted in their home countries for their ability to track "suspicious" people and groups.

In Kazakhstan, doubts about the intentions of certain countries in Central Asia are growing, and critics are wary of such systems...

Although Kazakhstan requires people to obtain state permission to hold protests, permission is often denied. But since 2018, demonstrations have become more common in Kazakhstan. With these advanced surveillance technologies, it is easier than ever for Kazakh authorities to lock down unauthorized crowd gathering places. Some of the technological breakthroughs announced by Hikvision in December 2022 have raised a lot of concern.

Much of Arkol's digital infrastructure is ageing

Marat at the U.S. National Defense University points to the greater challenges posed by surveillance technology. "We saw during the pandemic how quickly this technology can be adapted to other uses, such as imposing lockdowns and tracking people's whereabouts. "

"This technique can also be easily used against protest leaders," she added. ”

In January 2022, the instability caused by rising energy prices led the Kazakh government to issue a "shoot-to-kill" order to protesters, killing more than 200 people in the ensuing clashes. Bitter Winter, a human rights news and propaganda outlet, wrote at the time that the producing country had sent a video analysis team to Kazakhstan to use cameras to identify and arrest protesters. Anonymous sources said in the report that the facial contours of the slain protesters were later compared with personal facial data that appeared in surveillance video of the riots to justify the government's massacre of the "terrorists."

Since security is a core promise of the smart city model, extensive public surveillance is almost a guarantee. The head of Tengri Lab, which leads the development of smart Aqkol in Kazakhstan, has said in past interviews that school safety was a key motivation for the company's decision to pioneer the use of AI-powered cameras.

"After the high-profile incident in Kerch, we added the ability to automatically detect weapons," he said. He was referring to a mass shooting at a university in Russian-occupied Crimea in October 2018, which killed more than 20 people. In the same speech, he also claimed: "All video cameras in the city can automatically detect large gatherings of people." This alludes to the possibility that the technology could be used against protesters.

Soon, more smart city systems will emerge across Kazakhstan. The Intelligent Akol project team and the Kazakh Telecom Company have signed memorandums of understanding with Almaty (with a population of almost 2 million) and Karaganda (with a population of 500,000) to develop similar systems. "The mayor of Karaganda was impressed with our technology and capabilities, but he was mainly interested in surveillance cameras," Kirpichnikov told me.

As for the question of whether these systems share data with other state officials, "we simply don't have a clear answer to who owns it and how it is used," Marat told me. "We can't say for sure whether other countries have access or not, but we do know that companies in some countries are extremely dependent on their home governments. "

When I contacted Tengri Lab to ask if there were any private data security issues related to the project, the company declined to comment.

Resident of Akol

What does all this mean for Akol? The village is small, and the faces captured on camera are rarely strangers. Analysts told me they could recognize most of the town's 13,000 residents. I asked if it would make people feel uncomfortable knowing that their neighbors were watching them at all times.

Daniel, a native analyst, told me that he doesn't believe the platform's technology can be misused. "All my friends and family know that I'm watching them in this room and keeping them safe," he said. I don't think anyone feels threatened, we're their friends, their neighbors. ”

"People are afraid of what they don't understand, people complain about cameras until they need them," Kirpichnikov said. "There was once a lady who spoke out against the project, but after we returned her lost handbag, she started to see the benefits of our construction here after we found her handbag through the camera.

After a few years of running the system, "everything is normal," Danielle said with a shrug. "No one ever complained to me".

For ordinary people, it doesn't mean much to happen together, at least as it seems now. As Irina, a young teacher I met on the main road in the village, said, "I don't really know what a smart city is, but I love living here." They said we were safer, my bill was lower than before, and I was happy. ”

About the Author:Bradley S. Jardine is the Special Projects Editor at Coda Story. He is the author of the book "The Great Wall of Steel". Bradley's work explores surveillance technology and the growing security presence of some countries in Eurasia. He is currently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and serves as Director of Research at the Oaks Society for Central Asian Affairs.

文章信源：Coda Story（CODA）

About the source: Coda Story is an online news platform belonging to a non-profit media company whose name is derived from the Latin word "cauda", which means "tail". Coda, which focuses on investigative journalism and in-depth reporting on global issues, covering areas such as politics, human rights, technology and social justice, was launched in 2015. The tendency of authoritarianism to spread is the intersection of all the news focuses that Coda focuses on. Coda reports on the misuse of new technologies, the manipulation of scientific facts, the rise of oligarchy, the dangers of transnational oppression, and stories of historical narratives being weaponized to serve political agendas. In each story, Coda strives to explain to readers the importance of these issues and the impact they may have on the future of humanity.

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