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Radio News: Governments continue to periodically shut down the Internet
May 17, 2016 10:45 pm
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The Atlantic magazine reports that there are some days in Iraq when students have tests in school, and the country's entire Internet is shut down. For the second year in a row the government ordered Iraqi telecom companies to shut down to the Internet to prevent cheating, according to human-rights groups. An Internet analytics company called Dyn logged a pattern of three-hour long blackouts during the testing period there. Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group, reports that there have been 12 government-mandated Internet blackouts around the planet this year. Uzbekistan’s government also shut down the internet during school exams in 2014, and the same thing happened this year in Gujarat, a state in northwest India. But, usually, unrest or elections are the reasons behind Internet shutdowns.
The Atlantic magazine reports that there are some days in Iraq when students have tests in school, and the country's entire Internet is shut down. For the second year in a row the government ordered Iraqi telecom companies to shut down to the Internet to prevent cheating, according to human-rights groups. An Internet analytics company called Dyn logged a pattern of three-hour long blackouts during the testing period there. Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group, reports that there have been 12 government-mandated Internet blackouts around the planet this year. Uzbekistan’s government also shut down the internet during school exams in 2014, and the same thing happened this year in Gujarat, a state in northwest India. But, usually, unrest or elections are the reasons behind Internet shutdowns.