Iraq Shuts Down Internet for Entire Country to Prevent Exam Cheating - Polidicks

[quote]This year, the country's Internet went dark on May 14, 15, and 16, between 05:00 AM and 08:00 AM GMT. Adding timezone differences, that's 08:00 to 11:00 AM, the time and dates for Iraq's official exams for secondary and high schools. The same thing happened in 2015, but no Iraqi official has ever admitted it. After it happened this year as well, coincidentally right on national exam days, there's no reason for government officials to explain the downtimes, since anyone can now reach the obvious conclusion.[/quote] [media]https://twitter.com/akamai_soti/status/732167158764044288[/media] source: [url]http://news.softpedia.com/news/iraq-shuts-down-internet-in-entire-country-to-prevent-exam-cheating-504181.shtml[/url]

What about the people who arn't in schools and need to use the internet for important shit?

Seems like a very ham-fisted way of preventing exam cheating, and a very nice way to signal to outside observers that your government is highly incompetent.

I'm pretty sure the whole exams excuse is a cover-up to hide the fact that they're testing a way to kill the internet in an entire country to suppress outside communication in the event that there's some sort of protest or general dissent.

they could of installed jammers to disrupt signals inside the halls, i know this may not be wise in case of an emergency but its better than disrupting the entire country's internet

jokes on them good cheaters make their cheats the day before

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;50343272]jokes on them good cheaters make their cheats the day before[/QUOTE] Yeah you're supposed to have the PDFs ready on your phone.

Guys, remember that it's Iraq. Fucking Iraq...

Wasn't Iraq the place where parents were climbing walls and into the schools to give their kids cheat sheets for the exam while they were doing it?

[QUOTE=sb27;50344583]Wasn't Iraq the place where parents were climbing walls and into the schools to give their kids cheat sheets for the exam while they were doing it?[/QUOTE] I think that was in India or one of the neighboring countries.

[QUOTE=orgornot;50343734]Yeah you're supposed to have the PDFs ready on your phone.[/QUOTE] You're supposed to have the phone prepared in the room you're going to test in

[QUOTE=sb27;50344583]Wasn't Iraq the place where parents were climbing walls and into the schools to give their kids cheat sheets for the exam while they were doing it?[/QUOTE] it was in India.

I think Iraq has more things to worry about than people cheating on exams.

If cheating is so bad that you need to shut down the internet, perhaps you should examine why cheating seems to be that bad.

[QUOTE=Matthew0505;50343819]They're testing out a new internet kill switch also known as "crumbling infrastructure".[/QUOTE] Or somebody patched a the core routers and accidentally wiped all the configs. I mean there have been a lot of Cisco vulnerabilities being found lately. :v:

God forbid we expect teachers and professors to take ANY precautions. Now they'll have to use, GASP, written notes on paper :O So, can we really fault them for wanting an impressive grade in order to get a job outside of their piece of shit country?

[QUOTE=Yadda;50345963]God forbid we expect teachers and professors to take ANY precautions. Now they'll have to use, GASP, written notes on paper :O So, can we really fault them for wanting an impressive grade in order to get a job outside of their piece of shit country?[/QUOTE] No, if you cant get a good grade in a test without cheating, tough. It would be unfair on those who actually had to work to get their grades.

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;50345981]No, if you cant get a good grade in a test without cheating, tough. It would be unfair on those who actually had to work to get their grades.[/QUOTE] My remark was less of a defense towards cheating as a whole, but acknowledging how pathetic it must be that an educational institution is incapable of assuring legitimate test scores without being piggybacked by an equally pathetic government.

[QUOTE=Yadda;50346027]My remark was less of a defense towards cheating as a whole, but acknowledging how pathetic it must be that an educational institution is incapable of assuring legitimate test scores without being piggybacked by an equally pathetic government.[/QUOTE] In fairness, it's getting harder and harder to prevent cheating in examinations. Despite all the precautions being taken, there's always somebody who finds a way around how the system, or somebody else who acts as enabler, helping others to game the system, at a price. We have our own fair share of exam scandals, including one scandal which went all the way to a cabal of politicians and examiners/proctors who were helping students to cheat in an important government entrance exam, to get job placements, especially medical seats. This scam ran from the mid 1990s all the way to 2011, where they first arrested 100 people. The lid got blown open completely when individuals were caught impersonating test takers in 2013 for the postgraduate medical admissions. The waters get muddied further when you see that there were a number of mysterious deaths related to this scandal, where a number of accused/suspects and investigators/journalists died. Nobody knows to this day the full scale of this scam, much less who the actual kingpins were. Investigations are still ongoing, under the aegis of the CBI (our version of the FBI.) If you want to read more about it, this wikipedia article has a good summary; [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyapam_scam[/url] On a lighter, yet no less disturbing note, examiners are at their wit's end to stop fraud and cheating here even to this day. Some interesting tactics they adopted included a strict dress code for candidates that banned almost everything but the kitchen sink, and another examination where they made all the male candidates in a police selection exam strip to their skivvies to write the exam paper, under the supervision of a ton of cops. Of course, this led to a lot of media outrage, but it's a pointedly sad day when such desperate measures are needed to prevent cheating, and sadder still that they might still be bypassed. When money gets put into the equation, people will do anything to ensure that their meal ticket remains undisturbed.