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Even if you accept "it must be completely impossible for students to access the internet during exam periods" as an important goal (it seems very extreme to me,

Even if you accept "it must be completely impossible for students to access the internet during exam periods" as an important goal (it seems very extreme to me, but whatever) I'm astonished that cutting the entire country's internet off is the only way to achieve that. What about cutting off just mobile data + school wifi? Everybody with wifi or a network connection elsewhere would be just fine. Still extreme, but dramatically less disruptive. Plausibly you could limit this further, to block data only on phone masts near schools. Still an ridiculous measure, but I'm really surprised that they've taken the most extreme measure possible instead of trying to limit the fallout at least a little bit. It's not like nobody is using it - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=SY https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?location... shows that by 2017 more than 1/3 of Syrians had internet access, and rapidly increasing.

padastra 5y ago
At some level of incompetence, you might ask whether the underlying assumptions are wrong -- for example, perhaps they're looking for excuses to reduce internet access more generally.
- jl6 5y ago
  One could imagine a 365-day excuse calendar which provides a cover story for any time they want to shut down the internet. Today’s excuse is exams.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    This whole story belongs under April 1st sadly
- _old_dude_ 5y ago
  It's like a fire drill. The government wants to desensitize people. They want people be to used to the fact that cutting internet is something mundane so the next time they do it because of a protest, nobody will care.
  - slipframe 5y ago
    > It's like a fire drill. The government wants to desensitize people. I think this analogy is good, except for 'desensitize' which should be 'normalize'. Fire drills particularly are meant to normalize responding to a fire alarm going off (to make sure people know how to get out of buildings fast), but certainly aren't meant to desensitize people to fire alarms. Though in the case of internet shutdowns, desensitization and normalization are basically the same thing.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    Is that a bad thing? Think about it from a perspective of legitimate resistance against the government. Not only are you training your citizens and preparing them for the fact that this occurs, but you're giving the citizens the cultural understanding that they can effectively respond when it happens. Internet goes out? Let me hop to our archaic method of message communication we've already devised with neighbors and other "group members" that we have no problems with. For the first world yes I get it this is unacceptable. For the third world in a war torn country? It's almost necessary.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bloak 5y ago
I agree that the shut-down seems over-broad, but, at the same time, might it be too narrow? Couldn't people also use "non-data" mobile communications, like SMS or even voice calls, for cheating? If they're not stopping voice calls and there's a working landline within 100 metres or so, an enterprising cheat could probably set up a private Wi-Fi access point connected to an old-school modem doing dial-up either internationally or locally to a shortwave radio shack.
- lolc 5y ago
  The obvious answer is to shield the exam rooms!
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Still not enough: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8820015 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8820015
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      My proposed algorithm: 1. Shield the exam room against anything you can think of. 2. Find the few cheaters that manage to overcome your measures anyway. Give them STEM grants, recognition, whatnot. 3. Next exam round, find the people selling turn-key cheating solution and give them entrepreneurship grants. Flunk the people who bought the cheating solution. 4. Upgrade your countermeasures, go to step 1.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  People have been cheating on exams long before the internet existed. The only way to guarantee no one cheats on an exam is to never give the exam in the first place. I think exams are the “good reason” the government has given the public to justify shutting off internet access, I don’t think it’s the real reason.
- kaetemi 5y ago
  I find it funny that preventing cheating seemingly appears to be of higher priority, to a lot of people, than providing better education.
alias_neo 5y ago
Given the year+ we've just had, I'm more surprised to see comments like this ignoring the possibility that perhaps students aren't sat in schools or exam rooms? If you had an entire country worth of students taking exams from home, absolutely possible given the past year, and you wanted, as a government to prevent them cheating by accessing the internet, what, I wonder would the most obvious solution be? For what it's worth, I still believe it's an utterly ridiculous measure, but how can we not be considering this possibility?
- halfdan 5y ago
  Uhm. Without Internet they can't take tests from home unless you mail it to them - at that point cheating becomes much easier by just meeting up with your buddies and doing the test together.
  - alias_neo 5y ago
    If the servers for the exams are hosted in the country, why would they need ”internet”? The gov only needs to block connections leaving the country, for example.
    - quenix 5y ago
      Students would still be able to cheat by collaborating with students and tutors inside the country, then.
      - worewood 5y ago
        Limit access to only those servers.
    - crossroadsguy 5y ago
      So you assume there can’t be a server inside the country which hosts the answers?
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
Johnwbh 5y ago
This is the Syrian government we're talking about here. Recent history may indicate that one shouldn't trust them to be entirely truthful about their reasons for doing things
- tdeck 5y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. It wouldn't be such a surprise if a bunch of people were "disappeared" during the shutoff period, or some other such thing. Turning off the internet makes it harder to mobilize opposition. Syria's is a dictatorship after all.
toast0 5y ago
From that stat page, Syrians have about 9 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, and fixed telephone lines were only a bit more, but mobile phone subscriptions were more than one per person. To a first approximation, cutting off mobile data is cutting off the internet. The same is true in many other countries; there's just not a lot of people with home internet connections, and often those aren't part of government forced internet shutdowns (sometimes on purpose to try to let businesses still work, sometimes because it's easier to get the handful of wireless carriers to do it than the sometimes many wireline carriers, sometimes because the government forgot). But anyway, if you cut off 90% of the people, it breaks the utility for communicating with people within your country.

padastra 5y ago

At some level of incompetence, you might ask whether the underlying assumptions are wrong -- for example, perhaps they're looking for excuses to reduce internet access more generally.

jl6 5y ago
One could imagine a 365-day excuse calendar which provides a cover story for any time they want to shut down the internet. Today’s excuse is exams.
- FredPret 5y ago
  This whole story belongs under April 1st sadly
_old_dude_ 5y ago
It's like a fire drill. The government wants to desensitize people. They want people be to used to the fact that cutting internet is something mundane so the next time they do it because of a protest, nobody will care.
- slipframe 5y ago
  > It's like a fire drill. The government wants to desensitize people. I think this analogy is good, except for 'desensitize' which should be 'normalize'. Fire drills particularly are meant to normalize responding to a fire alarm going off (to make sure people know how to get out of buildings fast), but certainly aren't meant to desensitize people to fire alarms. Though in the case of internet shutdowns, desensitization and normalization are basically the same thing.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Is that a bad thing? Think about it from a perspective of legitimate resistance against the government. Not only are you training your citizens and preparing them for the fact that this occurs, but you're giving the citizens the cultural understanding that they can effectively respond when it happens. Internet goes out? Let me hop to our archaic method of message communication we've already devised with neighbors and other "group members" that we have no problems with. For the first world yes I get it this is unacceptable. For the third world in a war torn country? It's almost necessary.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bloak 5y ago

I agree that the shut-down seems over-broad, but, at the same time, might it be too narrow? Couldn't people also use "non-data" mobile communications, like SMS or even voice calls, for cheating? If they're not stopping voice calls and there's a working landline within 100 metres or so, an enterprising cheat could probably set up a private Wi-Fi access point connected to an old-school modem doing dial-up either internationally or locally to a shortwave radio shack.

lolc 5y ago
The obvious answer is to shield the exam rooms!
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Still not enough: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8820015 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8820015
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    My proposed algorithm: 1. Shield the exam room against anything you can think of. 2. Find the few cheaters that manage to overcome your measures anyway. Give them STEM grants, recognition, whatnot. 3. Next exam round, find the people selling turn-key cheating solution and give them entrepreneurship grants. Flunk the people who bought the cheating solution. 4. Upgrade your countermeasures, go to step 1.
elliekelly 5y ago
People have been cheating on exams long before the internet existed. The only way to guarantee no one cheats on an exam is to never give the exam in the first place. I think exams are the “good reason” the government has given the public to justify shutting off internet access, I don’t think it’s the real reason.
kaetemi 5y ago
I find it funny that preventing cheating seemingly appears to be of higher priority, to a lot of people, than providing better education.

alias_neo 5y ago

Given the year+ we've just had, I'm more surprised to see comments like this ignoring the possibility that perhaps students aren't sat in schools or exam rooms? If you had an entire country worth of students taking exams from home, absolutely possible given the past year, and you wanted, as a government to prevent them cheating by accessing the internet, what, I wonder would the most obvious solution be? For what it's worth, I still believe it's an utterly ridiculous measure, but how can we not be considering this possibility?

halfdan 5y ago
Uhm. Without Internet they can't take tests from home unless you mail it to them - at that point cheating becomes much easier by just meeting up with your buddies and doing the test together.
- alias_neo 5y ago
  If the servers for the exams are hosted in the country, why would they need ”internet”? The gov only needs to block connections leaving the country, for example.
  - quenix 5y ago
    Students would still be able to cheat by collaborating with students and tutors inside the country, then.
    - worewood 5y ago
      Limit access to only those servers.
  - crossroadsguy 5y ago
    So you assume there can’t be a server inside the country which hosts the answers?
crossroadsguy 5y ago

Johnwbh 5y ago

This is the Syrian government we're talking about here. Recent history may indicate that one shouldn't trust them to be entirely truthful about their reasons for doing things

tdeck 5y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. It wouldn't be such a surprise if a bunch of people were "disappeared" during the shutoff period, or some other such thing. Turning off the internet makes it harder to mobilize opposition. Syria's is a dictatorship after all.

toast0 5y ago

From that stat page, Syrians have about 9 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, and fixed telephone lines were only a bit more, but mobile phone subscriptions were more than one per person. To a first approximation, cutting off mobile data is cutting off the internet. The same is true in many other countries; there's just not a lot of people with home internet connections, and often those aren't part of government forced internet shutdowns (sometimes on purpose to try to let businesses still work, sometimes because it's easier to get the handful of wireless carriers to do it than the sometimes many wireline carriers, sometimes because the government forgot). But anyway, if you cut off 90% of the people, it breaks the utility for communicating with people within your country.