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posted by n1 on Tuesday June 30 2015, @02:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the official-story dept.

A year after Iraqi officials ordered the shutdown of Internet access in nearly a quarter of the country to limit the ability of ISIS to communicate, the government ordered a complete shutdown of Internet service in the country for three hours on Saturday, June 27. A shorter interruption followed today. At least one of these outages was apparently intended to block a different sort of message traffic: the sharing of answers for national exams for entry into junior high school.

The outage began at 5:00 am in Iraq and lasted until 8:00 am, based on data from Dyn Research.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/iraqi-government-shut-down-internet-to-prevent-exam-cheating/


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  • (Score: 1) by rst on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:23AM

    by rst (2175) on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:23AM (#203167)

    Let's ignore all the issues about appropriateness for the moment. Why are they writing tests at 5:00 am? Wait a minute, forget that for a moment. How do they get their kids out of bed earily enough to get there? Mine only get up that early on Saturday mornings.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:31AM (#203171)

    A live test during a period of time they expected few people to be using the internet.

    The second test was no doubt on the monday when they actually ran the test. Unless of course they are on a 6 day a week school schedule, in which case saturday was the test, and monday was the results.

  • (Score: 1) by citizenr on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:16AM

    by citizenr (2737) on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:16AM (#203191)

    Kids wake up early to milk the sheep.

  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:45AM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:45AM (#203224) Journal
    It's Ramadan - look it up.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:27PM (#203484)

      During this month (determined by the lunar cycle, so it changes each year like Easter does), Muslims can't have any food or water while there's sunlight.

      There is an incredibly deadly heat wave going on in Pakistan and they are having a hard time getting folks there to drink -any- water during the heat of the day--much less enough so they won't die of heatstroke.

      Religions are stupid.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:58PM

        by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:58PM (#203524)

        > Religions are stupid.

        People are stupider. A holy text is just a bad novel until someone starts believing it.

        Besides, if a person refuses to break fast for survival purposes then I've read more of the Quran than they (or the thumbs they're under) have.

        [2:183-184] "O you who have believed, decreed upon you is fasting as it was decreed upon those before you that you may become righteous a limited number of days. So whoever among you is ill or on a journey then an equal number of days. And upon those who are able a ransom of feeding a poor person. And whoever volunteers excess it is better for him. But to fast is best for you, if you only knew."

        It says, plain as day (when the day is sunny with chance of weak translation), that if you're ill you're allowed to break fast and do it later. I'm sure some whacked theologian would argue that the early signs of heat stroke don't count as being ill, but then there's some theologians who read Daniel and see the United Nations so there you go.