Iraq
Despite positive comments from the Iraq Ministry of Communication that they would consider not shutting down the Internet to prevent cheating during academic exams in Iraq, the government did go ahead and shut down the Internet for a four-hour period. Measurements from Cloudflare, IODA, and OONI all document this shutdown.
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.
IODA measurements show a drop in Internet connectivity in Iraq beginning around 12:40 UTC and resuming around 5:00 UTC.
Cloudflare Radar shows a similar outage.
A multi-hour #Internet disruption was observed in #Iraq between 04:00-08:00 local time. The shutdown was to prevent cheating on academic exams.@Cloudflare data shows that two ASNs were the most impacted, resulting in a 74% drop in traffic in the country.https://t.co/QNpdMSFIDu pic.twitter.com/ErgzMBC3ZH
— Cloudflare Radar (@CloudflareRadar) June 1, 2023
The #Iraq government has shut down the #Internet for 9th grade #exams today, June 1st. The #shutdown lasted 4 hours. Exams and shutdowns will continue through July.
Follow Iraq Internet connectivity in near realtime:https://t.co/kIkBCZtMMB#keepiton pic.twitter.com/sq6mkailF4
— IODA (@IODA_live) June 1, 2023