Soapbox Saturday: Protesters Link Cell Phones to Create Mesh Net
Despite China’s best efforts to censor them, Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are finding ways to talk to one another and organize without Wi-Fi access or going through a central network. Instead they’ve been creating their own with a phone app that lets nearby devices communicate under the radar.
Droves of protesters have turned to an app called FireChat, run by Open Garden, which links smartphones to create mesh networks, or temporary Internet networks to circumvent outages and government monitoring.