Over the past six months, four countries have shut down the internet because of school exams, purportedly because both students and underpaid teachers looking to supplement their income have leaked exam answers online. Iraq blocked the entire internet to keep sixth-graders from cheating—in a country whose very existence is under threat from ISIS, and where information can mean the difference between life and death.
Source: Slate
How Iraq turned off the internet:
Earlier this week, Iraq’s government turned off all broadband and mobile broadband connections, effectively cutting the entire country off from the rest of the world. The reason? So students didn’t cheat on their exams. Each block, according to the Social Media Exchange, took place between 5am and 8am, dictated by the Ministry of Communications across “all regions of Iraq”.
Iraq is an old hand when it comes to internet censorship, with 15 reported shutdowns in 2015 alone. At around the same time last year, officials in Iraq halted web services for the same exam-based reason. Other web blackouts took place in 2014 and included specific blocks on social media in an attempt to stop the spread of Islamic State propaganda.
But what makes the most recent case different to most – and worries civil liberties groups – is the scale and ease with which the network can be turned off.
Source: wired.co.uk
Iraq Shut Down Its Internet to Prevent Sixth-Graders From Cheating:
The arms race between cheaters and test administrators is nothing new, and handheld devices that can connect to the Internet have tipped the scales in favor of test-takers looking for a little help. But the Iraqi government has taken the sledgehammer approach to the problem: This is the second year in a row that it has ordered Iraqi telecom companies to shut down to the Internet in order to prevent cheating, according to human-rights groups. The research arm of Dyn, an Internet analytics company, logged a pattern of three-hour long blackouts starting three days ago. […]
“Given the security situation in Iraq, it’s quite an extreme measure,” [Deji Olukotun, the senior global advocacy manager at Access] said. “We see this as really disproportionate to what they’re trying to achieve.” Wholesale Internet blackouts impinge on citizens’ free-speech rights by cutting off the country’s link to the external world, and can help governments escape scrutiny in cases of abuse. Blackouts can also delay and hinder emergency services, and have the potential to seriously harm a country’s economy, Olukotun said.
Source: The Atlantic