But the government soon discovered that its greatest vulnerability during the shutdown was its own need for internet. By June 8 [2019], five days after the blackout began, landline access was switched back on. It was the most conservative option available: Landlines are rare and comparatively costly, subscribers are few, and landline access doesn’t reach much farther than banks, ministries, and private businesses. Even so, once it was restored, it made a difference.
[...]
With landline access came, almost immediately, landline hackers. A group of young techies operating independently from the rogue telecom ring set up parallel Wi-Fi through the government’s own network. Exploiting a vulnerability in the system, they were able to broadcast a new signal, “Sudan Revolution,” without disturbing the original network. They organized the work and spread the word the old-fashioned way, through word of mouth and SMS.
The blackout turned ordinary Sudanese into everyday hackers too. People clumped on street corners by banks and hotels — any place where a Wi-Fi signal could be picked up on a phone — and used a decryption app to crack network passwords. The IT manager at one mid-range hotel, well-known among United Nations clientele for its fast and reliable internet, said he had to change the password twice a day when too many people logged on. But he and the hotel’s owners sympathized with the people trying to get online to contact their families, so he’d wait until the network speed dropped to 1 Mpbs before hitting reset.
[...]
Old-fashioned phones and text messages, though easy to surveil, still worked. More importantly, much as social media had amplified calls to march or strike or join a sit-in, the revolution became an analog affair. A new network of “neighborhood committees” spread across the city, a revolutionary counterpart to the corrupt local councils that were central to Bashir’s mafia-surveillance state. “The neighborhood committees were the core of the revolution, especially when we had no internet,” said Sara Isam, a doctor who spearheaded public health management during the sit-in. During the blackout, they passed notes at stoplights or slipped pieces of paper under doors in the dead of night. They also turned the streets of Khartoum into offline message boards, tagging walls, billboards, and signs with graffiti announcing the next demo.
It all came to an end on June 30, nearly four weeks to the day after the massacre — and 30 years to the day after Bashir came to power in a coup — when several thousand people marched across the capital. “We had the feeling it wouldn’t work without internet, that we shouldn’t have high expectations,” said Omar, one of the leaders. “It astonished us. The biggest demonstration in the history of Sudan had been organized offline.” Not long after, the government agreed to negotiate a transition to civilian rule. And nine days after the march, Sudan’s high court ruled on a class-action suit that Hassan brought after his own personal victory. It ordered all the telecom companies to restore the Internet to subscribers; they complied the same day.
From the article:
[...]
[...]