When a far-right military coup briefly toppled Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002, his supporters in the sprawling slums of Caracas spread the word through a mixture of low-tech "cacerolazos" (pot-banging) and high-tech cellphones and pagers.

With one of the world's highest per-capita rates of cellphone use, Venezuelans flooded the streets and surrounded the presidential palace, their numbers quickly swelling to 100,000. The alarmed coup plotters, despite tacit support from the U.S. government, found themselves on the defensive and had to cede power to Chavez.

Reports later emerged that U.S. intelligence had foreseen the possibility of cellphone use by Chavez supporters. U.S. intelligence expert Wayne Madsen, himself a former U.S. military and intelligence operative, reported that a U.S. Navy warship stationed in waters just offshore had attempted to jam cellphone signals and pagers in Venezuela during the coup.