Kazakhstan uses electronic surveillance to enforce quarantine

The Kazakhstani ministry of health requires the 8,000 or so Kazakhstani citizens currently under quarantine to use the SmartAstana tracking app, which enables officials to ensure that they remain in isolation. By contrast, for the city of Almaty the ministry of the interior relies on video surveillance technology called Sergek, produced by the local telecommunications firm Korkem Telecom to find people who break quarantine . So far, these two cases are the only examples of the government employing new surveillance technologies as anti-pandemic tools. While these tools were deployed after more conventional efforts failed, the technology-enabled responses to the pandemic will help shape Kazakhstan's broader long-term agenda for digitisation.

Source: https://jamestown.org/program/kazakhstan-experiments-with-surveillance-technology-to-battle-coronavirus-pandemic/

Writer: Anna Gussarova
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 17 Issue: 47