Past

National shutdown

Another four-hour shutdown of the Internet for everyone in Iraq, in the Iraq government's belief that this will reduce cheating during high school exams. The shutdowns are expected to continue on July 10, 11, 12, 15 in 2023. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society, and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.

  • Total Duration 4 hours

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Population
46,042,015

Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free

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Local impact

Another four-hour shutdown of the Internet for everyone in Iraq, in the Iraq government's belief that this will reduce cheating during high school exams. The shutdowns are expected to continue on July 10, 11, 12, 15 in 2023. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society, and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.

Other supporting information

Measurements from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech shows a the shutdown on July 9 following a similar pattern to the previous shutdowns, beginning at 01:00 and ending at 05:00 (UTC).

Chart from IODA showing the Internet Shutdown on July 9

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