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Education Communications Network Networking The Internet

Algeria Shuts Off Entire Country's Internet To Stop Students From Cheating (gizmodo.com) 123

Algeria has begun instituting nationwide internet blackouts to prevent students from leaking high school diploma exams online. Gizmodo reports: The country will turn off mobile and landline internet service across the country for an hour at a time during the exam period, which started on Wednesday and runs through June 25. The 11 blackouts are scheduled for an hour after each exam begins. In 2016, exam questions were reportedly leaked online and authorities were dissatisfied with a less stringent attempt to limit social media during the 2017 exams. The sweeping shutdown will also block Facebook for the entirety of the exam period, Education Minister Nouria Benghabrit told Algerian newspaper Annahar, according to the BBC. Benghabrit reportedly said they are "not comfortable" with their choice to shut down all internet service, but that they "should not passively stand in front of such a possible leak." Metal detectors are reportedly being used to make sure that no one brings any internet-enabled devices into the exam halls. Surveillance cameras and phone jammers are also being used at the locations where the exams are being printed.
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Algeria Shuts Off Entire Country's Internet To Stop Students From Cheating

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    They do this crap all over the middle east. Always wondered what would happen if the student population gets organized/determined enough to cheat that they set up an underground wireless network (if that term even makes sense)?

    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @08:07PM (#56825942)

      Always wondered what would happen if the student population gets organized/determined enough to cheat that they set up an underground wireless network (if that term even makes sense)?

      What you're looking for is this:

      A mobile ad hoc network (MANET), also known as wireless ad hoc network or ad hoc wireless network, is a continuously self-configuring, infrastructure-less network of mobile devices connected wirelessly.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Have fun and enjoy!

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        They aren't so much worried about cheating in exam rooms; that's easy to fix, just take away mobile phones. They are worried about students taking an exam and then posting the questions and answers on social media afterwards. Not all students sit the exams at the exact same time so the ones taking them later could benefit from prior knowledge of the test content.

        • They aren't so much worried about cheating in exam rooms; that's easy to fix, just take away mobile phones. They are worried about students taking an exam and then posting the questions and answers on social media afterwards. Not all students sit the exams at the exact same time so the ones taking them later could benefit from prior knowledge of the test content.

          If that's true, isn't it solved by restricting mobile / camera devices, and ensuring that each student that is given a test returns a test?

          Or by having all students take the test at the same time? Or having several versions of the test for a few well-defined testing time slots?

          Sure neither of those are easy, but it has to be easier and less disruptive than hitting the internet's off button. Maybe it's just too corrupt to ensure these things.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Not cameras, from memory. What book and what charterers are on the literature exam etc.

            Most countries get around that by having a selection of papers, and having all students sit one paper on one day and then discarding it.

    • set up an underground wireless network (if that term even makes sense)

      Sure it does. It's called underground wires.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Russian sat phone with big data plan for the day?
  • thought an internet shut down would only be for natural disasters and security emergencies.
    Recall the "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions" and the way the US internet would be "regulated".
    https://www.cnet.com/news/obam... [cnet.com] (July 10, 2012) (not an EU link)
  • by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @07:53PM (#56825894)
    Because students don't cheat, the internet cheats!

    The problem is broken culture, not internet access.
    • by qaz123 ( 2841887 )
      That doesn't mean that they should not try fighting it with shutting of the internet
    • Because students don't cheat, the internet cheats! The problem is broken culture, not internet access.

      Indeed it is. But it is far easier to cut off communication than it is to fix cheating. Or do you propose we let parents and friends come in and talk to students during exams too and just base it on the honour system?

      Pretty much every country has some form of communication blackout for people under exam conditions. This is just a slightly more extreme version.

  • ... that way those that happen to have great memories can't cheat by accessing them.
  • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @08:49PM (#56826076) Homepage

    Why shut down the entire country's internet, when you can just wrap the testing location in wire?

    Of course, anyone with an electronic device could still just have his cheat-sheet cached on it locally...

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Kids, this is why we can't have nice things

    Actually, it turns out that on the real modern world having the ability to quickly find the needed information online is useful and not everyone can do it.

    Maybe they should make the test harder and just expect kids to use any resource available to them because that's how life does work. Do the "fair" academic test only for kids who don't have the resources, aka fail miserably at the open ended one.

    That way Algeria will not be the country producing that programmer o

    • by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @02:30PM (#56830118)

      Maybe they should make the test harder and just expect kids to use any resource available to them because that's how life does work.

      Would you want to live in an apartment building designed by a construction engineer who passed his engineering license exams by having his roommate give him the answers to the test, or one who understands the concepts of load bearing this and stress limit that? You know, one who can tell that the answer he gets from Wikipedia about how to design where you sleep at night isn't right?

      like, did you even TRY yo search online?

      Would you like him to be the programmer on your team who implements an O(N^2) sort in your app because that's the first one he found online, instead of understanding the problem and using an O(N) algorithm, or understanding even more and deciding it is appropriate to use an O(1) "sort" by keeping a sorted, linked-list of the data instead of sorting each time? Do YOU want to have to tell the client that the app you wrote for him is miserably slow in real life applications because he's got too much data and your programmer was a cut-and-paste-from-the-net expert who didn't understand how to make it fast enough from the beginning?

  • Students take exams in the U.S.A. as well, and I don't think the American government has ever shut down the entire Internet to prevent cheating. Why does Algeria have so much more trouble dealing with cheating than America? Can Algeria learn anything from the American model?
    • by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @01:19AM (#56826830)

      Why does Algeria have so much more trouble dealing with cheating than America? Can Algeria learn anything from the American model?

      You're implying US students don't cheat, or cheat much less than Algerian students. Which is likely wrong.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        You're implying US students don't cheat

        Good point. The difference with the American system is that we (the USA) have a very robust economy. And can afford to carry the cheats and morons in businesses for the rest of their lives.

        Note that in some professions, where individual performance is critical, like the medical profession, there are systems of internships in place to weed out the low performers.

      • You're implying US students don't cheat,

        No, he's explicitly saying that the US doesn't take such drastic measures to deal with the ones that do. The "US" deals with it better, and it can't "deal with it better" if the implication is that it never happens, now can it? There's nothing in that statement that implies US students don't cheat or even cheat less. We just don't shut off Internet for the entire country every time there is a test.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Friday June 22, 2018 @03:15AM (#56827054)

      Students take exams in the U.S.A. as well, and I don't think the American government has ever shut down the entire Internet to prevent cheating. Why does Algeria have so much more trouble dealing with cheating than America? Can Algeria learn anything from the American model?

      That's probably because these educational systems are based on the British model, where you have literally a Mother of All Exams to take, and how you do on those exams dictates your path in life. Basically every student will write the exam at the same time on the same day (heaven forbid you get ill or sick, though I'm sure you can take an alternate if you really are sick). But these exams are it - do well, you can look forward to an overseas scholarship to some prestigious college or university anywhere - the UK, US, etc. Do really well and it'll be a full meal deal. Do less well and it'll be a local college or university, then trade school, then well, whatever else.

      Honestly, it's a rather disgusting system, and in Asia, from China to India and Singapore and others, it leads to some seriously messed up kids - suicides become the #1 reason for death. Doesn't help that parents generally insist on the foreign scholarship or kicked out of the house. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the death rate among teens due to suicides will start to approach that of the US from guns.

      Thus, it's no big surprise that the alternative to killing yourself is to cheat. And cheating devices have grown in sophistication and complexity (and generally are under $200), from smartwatches that hold gigabytes of text and images, micro radio transmitters and receivers, ultra tiny cellphones, etc.

      The American system generally has a lot more compassion and in general, you don't have one big exam to determine your future, you may have the SATs and ACTs and other standardized tests, but in general, the kids figure out their path in life - if they want to study overseas, they work for it, else they have to go local. Or some just go trade school and be done with it.

      There's still an incentive to cheat, but honestly, the push and motivation to cheat is a lot less - cheating on your SATs and ACTs may get you in the door at your dream university, but in general, you probably wouldn't hack it. You're not trying to compete for your parent's (and relatives!) love, a roof over your head, etc. Not surprisingly, the teenage suicide rate is far lower.

      For all its faults, the American system at least lets the kids choose their path and gives them opportunity to succeed, rather than boil down their entire learning into a single number that decides their fate.

      In the US, you cheat to get better grades. Elsewhere, you cheat just to survive, live, or avoid getting kicked out of the house.

      • by qaz123 ( 2841887 )
        The American model would not work in these countries because of corruption. Also, they would cheat on those "SATs ACTs" too.
      • "Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the death rate among teens due to suicides will start to approach that of the US from guns."

        Most teenage gun deaths ARE suicides. Kids in the USA are killing themselves, too. There are twice as many gun suicides as homicides here.

      • in the us you can dropout get your ged and still go to local collage and trade school. as you said the doors are never closed.
    • They did learn from the American model. They learnt that exams are important and can have an affect on their life. They learnt that in America people aren't allowed to talk during exams. The learnt that supervisors are generally quite poor at spotting cheating mid test, and they learnt that mobile devices can be used for communication. That's what the students learnt.

      Now what did the government learn? The government learnt that it has power over airwaves. It also learnt that its country is not dependent on

  • by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @10:52PM (#56826468)

    Cheaters suck.

    They ruin things for everyone who is and can actually do the task legitimately.

    Doesn't matter if it's body building (where they now look more like ball shaped aliens than body builders), sports (where they die years too early and break reacords set by people who were not cheating), or screw up the reputation of their education system when they go to a new job and do terribly.

    Glad Algeria is taking education seriously. It's foundational and critical.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 )

      I find it ludicrous that a comment saying cheaters are bad would be modded down.

      What's the world coming to.

      Cheaters are bad.

      They ruin things for everyone who is and can actually do the task legitimately.

      Doesn't matter if it's body building (where they now look more like ball shaped aliens than body builders), sports (where they die years too early and break records set by people who were not cheating), or screw up the reputation of their education system when they go to a new job and do terribly.

      Glad Algeri

      • I agree my comment is redundant and the original comment has been resurrected from 0 status up to a 3.

        Thanks moderators! You can let the redundant comment die to 0.

        I get modded down at times and it's fair. Happens to everyone. But sometimes, the modding seems unfair and more about suppressing an opinion someone personally doesn't like.

        When I'm moderating I do scan the 0 and -1 comments before I upmod any positive comments.

        In college, I was picked to be on an academic honesty hearing and we did find the g

    • On the other hand, everyone cheats at something. Some examples of cheating (if you want to interpret it loosely):

      - Speeding.
      - queue jumping by the elderly
      - Making money without working (investments and being rich already)
      - exaggerating your skills to get a good job
      - exaggerating your good qualities to get laid
      - finding loopholes in a system
      - using computers instead of your mind for tasks (arithmetic, spell checkers, internet research)
      - store clerk gives you the wrong change, or bank error in your favour.
      - i

  • If every answer can be had in a matter of seconds on a phone.
    • 1. send a pic of the problem to your elder brother at home
      2. play tetris
      3. write down the solution that your brother has completed
  • This is impressive, in a ham-fisted way ...
  • have many versions slightly different ... how lazy do you have to be to have the whole country take the same exact test.

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