Parliament Wants to Control Internet Traffic

The Kyrgyz authorities want to monitor internet traffic, a goal which NBCentralAsia observers say will be both costly and ultimately impossible to achieve.



On May 24, the parliamentary committee on transport and communications approved a bill proposed by member of parliament Alisher Sabirov which would allow the authorities to use technology to monitor the information held on the internet, including its collection, use and distribution.



According to an official statement, the bill aims to prevent “the spread of false and unreliable information, which often wrecks computer equipment and whole networks”. This appears to mean both real viruses and false virus warnings.



NBCentralAsia’s computer experts say those tasked with policing the law will have a whole host of technical and legal problems to contend with.



Nikolai Zagorodny, head of the service department at the Elkat internet provider, says it is technically and practically impossible to monitor web traffic. Monthly traffic through Kyrgyz providers can reach several terabytes (trillion bytes) while daily traffic amounts to thousands of gigabytes, he explains. “There is no way such volumes of information can be controlled.”



Domains, or remote computers with unique web addresses, release information onto the internet and there is nothing service providers can do to prevent inappropriate content appearing on the web.



The experts say the law could only be enforced through massive spending on technology and IT specialists. The expenditure might go to waste as the domains of sites that carry undesirable material might be outside Kyrgyzstan.



“The parliamentarians’ plan isn’t very good. The internet is public and should not be controlled,” concluded Zagorodny.



Asylgul Mambetalieva, one of the architects of the proposed law, says many people publish lies and false information on the internet in Kyrgyzstan. “Alisher Sabirov asked me to draft a bill to at least restrict or help identify the culprits in some way,” she said.



But Mambetalieva admits that the only way offending internet sources can be successfully identified is by pointing cameras at the computer screen. They would have to be installed on a voluntary basis to protect freedom of information and to ensure that internet café owners are not forced to fork out for expensive equipment.



“Installing surveillance cameras violates people’s right to obtain and distribute information, and also their rights as consumers. So we decided not to make it compulsory, but to make it possible,” she said.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)