When George Orwell wrote his novel 1984, he imagined a world where government authorities used mass surveillance technology to keep the population under control. As tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong over the past three days, the Chinese government reportedly blocked the photo sharing app Instagram in mainland China. The difference between real life and the novel is that that protesters are finding ways around these draconian measures.

One of these is the FireChat app, which can send and receive messages without an internet connection. It uses peer-to-peer Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct to create a massive mesh network in which each mobile device can link to another nearby without sending information over the internet.  All you need to use the app is another user within a 70-meter radius.

As China blocks social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, FireChat has reported more than 100,000 new downloads. Twitter and Facebook are still operating in Hong Kong (they have been blocked in mainland China). But should the crackdown spread to the special autonomous territory, FireChat would prove an ideal tool for coordinating protests and exchanging information, one that is less susceptible to interference from the Chinese government.

So far, internet and cellular services are still working in Hong Kong, although news and social media posts of the Occupy Central protests, as they are called, have been blocked in mainland China, while Instagram has been blocked entirely.  If this crackdown were to spread to Hong Kong, FireChat would still be able to function.

What the protests are all about

Students in China and their sympathizers are protesting China’s refusal to allow the territory to elect its own governor. China took over Hong Kong from the British in 1997 but never followed through on its promise to allow fully democratic elections there.

Protestors are also angry over rising inequality in Hong Kong. While the territory has long been touted as a center of free markets and free enterprise, it has has a Gini coefficient of .537— making it one of the least equal industrialized economies in the world. Hong Kong also recently came in first place in the Economist’s “crony-capitalism index.” Hong Kong’s real-estate market is the second most expensive in the world.