Electronic mischief-making has come into its own this year. Between WikiLeaks, Anonymous and more recently LulzSec, hacking cults are becoming high-profile irritants.

But Peter Fein, the human face of Telecomix and currently spreading the word about their work, doesn't seem too bothered by his "hacker" label when I meet him at Sheffield Doc Fest, where he was invited to sit on a panel called the Revolution will be Tweeted.

"We're kind of like an inverse Anonymous," Fein said. "We operate in a very similar way to Anonymous not just IRC [Internet Relay Chat – online, open forums where users can meet to chat] but also the non-hierarchical structure. Except they break things and we build them.

"I guess you could say it's guerrilla informational warfare. I can just tell you my experience of what happened, and why – I'm not an official spokesman, we just don't have those. I'm not sure what to call us – are we hacktivists? Hacker is such a loaded term … what we're doing is clearly different than LulzSec is doing."

If you're a Facebook or Twitter user you may recognise Tweets and status updates, such as these currently aimed at people in Syria with censured and monitored web access: "ATTENTION PEOPLE OF #SYRIA — Let the world know! Here is how! Dial up access for #Syria: +46850009990 +492317299993 +4953160941030 user:telecomix password:telecomix." Or "Call skype inbox.intercom.gs +97316199341 +12062794895 +883510001348973 to leave a msg and have it tweeted."

That was Telecomix.

The following week, calling from his home in Chicago, Fein says that in the early days of the Arab spring: "we saw what was happening in Egypt, we started asking around on the Telecomix IRC and eventually we managed to convince two ISPs, one French and one Dutch, to switch their old modem banks back on ... That worked really well – we ran the same thing again for Libya. It worked really well for two days before the government shut it down."

He adds: "There's a real attitude of throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what works," pointing to Telecomix's early attempt to create a ham (amateur) radio network with activists on the ground in the first few weeks of the Egyptian uprisings. "People that have access to ham radio were military guys and regime supporters – I'd be happy to talk to them to but … yeah ..."

Fein directs me towards the Telecomix IRC channel, where I ask about what projects everyone has been involved in. A mix of high- and low-tech responses come in from people with varying degrees: a Morse code-to-Twitter relay service, smuggling in satellite telephones to Libya, mass faxing medical leaflets on how to treat tear gas, setting up mirror sites, uploading scrambling and encryption programs. Fein is currently working on a wiki that specifically targets "street information tactics – flyering, stickers, posters ... I was talking to one guy in Egypt about a recipe for wheat paste and he thought that was awesome."

Fein recounts his recent meeting of two Middle Eastern users of Telecomix's services: "I actually met two activists at Sheffield ... they were super-appreciative and super-excited about the possibilities. One of them had used our dial-up services quite a bit."

The origins of Telecomix are unclear, like most of online history. This is Fein's version: "Telecomix started I think in 2006, by a bunch of Swedes. There was a telecoms bill that was brought in that they didn't like and so they set up an information service to let people know about the bill … how we got from there to international tech support, I don't know. But keeping information secure and available – that function has been around for a while."

Fein became involved late last year. After working at an internet startup in Chicago, he felt "burnt out" and went on sabbatical. He began hanging out in chat rooms for the hacker collective Anonymous, where one member suggested that Telcomix might be a better fit for Fein's skills.

Living off savings for the past eight months, Fein has been working overtime on Telecomix projects with their growing community of users.

"Some people just volunteer, literally. We'd put info together, post it up and people just respond, people just came out and set up a wikipage and people showed up on IRC and said 'how can I help?' So yeah it's a cool project and people are happy to put their technical skills to good use.

"The range of people on the Telecomix IRC – so right now's there are about 107 people tops on the IRC people; when we were doing things in Egypt there were about 500. The participation varies – it's what I call an 'ad-hocracy'. We don't have membership, we don't have a formal structure – people just come and go. We have MEPs, we have university professors, grad students ... anybody who's interested in facilitating free speech."

Fein stresses Telcomix's consensus is about attuning the tools the organisation develops to the needs of people who are deprived of telecommunications, and information on the ground is the ultimate goal. He cites Egypt: "The internet was being cut off and telephones were cut off and communication across the country got much more difficult. So Suez was completely cut off. And so this kind of created a need for internal communication — not for people to be able to talk on Facebook or Twitter to the world, but amongst themselves ... so there were a number of tools, mesh technology and so on — that we tried to help people figure out."

He explains: "I had several hours of chats with guys on the ground with what they needed. A lot of the time they don't have the technical knowledge of what they actually need, they just want to be able to communicate without being wiretapped … so we'll send them Tor or something. Towards the end they were just asking us how they could hold the [Tahrir] Square – it's difficult and necessary to communicate across an area that large and packed and we helped them."

How? "Instructions on how to set up a wireless mesh network [a way of creating a communication network, often using mobile phones' Bluetooth technology" or "two-way radio mics. One of the things we started working on is a how-to, a set of instructions, to build two-way radios, walkie-talkies… with hardware that people already have and the best thing we came up with is if you take a normal clock radio, smash it apart and cross a couple of wires and you can get them to communicate with each other. They have a two-kilometre range, I'm not a hardware guy though, I don't solder."

With Syria in mind Fein and the rest of the Telecomix community are looking to grow their network. "We're not really looking for attention, I do go around and talk about the work that I do, because first of all people find it interesting and also I want to get the word out. I'm looking for people that want to help because there is a huge amount of work. And it's exhausting, I worked 20 hours a day for eight days during Egypt. So we're burnt out. A lot of what we do is reactive … so it would be nice if people started to work on things that are more proactive.

"I can sit at home in Chicago … and we're not going to get arrested if we oppose Mubarak or Gaddafi – which is important to bear in mind when you're in communication with these people on the ground."