Hannah Jaffe-Walt

And sometimes some international sites can be accessed through the internal intranet, but others can't.

Sophia had a day off work and was testing out what she could and could not do on the internal system.

Okay, now I want to play a different group of messages for you.

Act two, the blackout before this one.

From an American perspective, we went to war with Iran.

That's what's happening there.

That's where the story begins.

But this war for Iranians landed in the middle of an ongoing story about what's been happening inside the country.

And these next two people who sent voice memos, they had a role in that story.

There have been regular, large protests against the Iranian regime for years in Iran.

And right before the war, massive demonstrations erupted around the entire country.

People took to the streets demanding the end of the regime, which has been in power in Iran for almost 50 years.

And then Iranian authorities put the country into a full communications blackout.

It started on January 8th.

Over the next few days during the blackout, security forces massacred people all across the country.

They killed thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of their own citizens.

They did this at a moment when there was no way for people to tell anyone, to post photos or videos or to warn their friends or call international reporters or even reach family outside of the country.

We still don't know the scale of the killing.

Human rights groups have been trying to document as many deaths as they can.

In a blackout, you can die without being counted.