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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

cybersect.substack.com

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#121

Post by squidproquo »

roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

The other thing to note is that journalism in the US has gotten really lazy. A lot of the articles you will see in the MSM are based on leaked info and press-releases from PR firms, etc. It's easier to for journalists to regurgitate stories hand-fed to them than doing truly hard and costly investigative work.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#122

Post by RHSeeger »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #110
RamRodification wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and let someone else pay the price in the end for letting these things happen unchecked. Perhaps your children :)

you caring a lot doesn't change reality in your favor. You get one vote that you can exercise once a year or so. Thats about all the agency you have on the wider world (and probably rightly so, if its to be proportional to the population) Being informed just enough to choose the less horrible of the two clowns the systems presents you... takes very little effort. Everything past that is a waste of brain cycles. Spend…

That's silly. Talking about such things; with friends, family, online, etc; raises awareness of it. And the more people that are aware of such things, the more likely they are to vote against it. So if you're relying on votes to change things, then discussing it helps.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#123

Post by singpolyma3 »

lxgr wrote: post #86
notatoad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, the more extraordinary the claim is, the more proof is required. And I’m with you, I’d normally be incredibly skeptical of a substack post from an author I’ve never heard of before, who writes as egotistically as this. But there is just no extraordinary claim in this article. Only a very very ordinary claim that should be believable to any person who has ever owned a cell phone: SIM farms are normal, common…

> SIM farms are normal, common things that exist all over the place to allow messages from far-away senders to be sent as if they came from a local number. Meanwhile, many US companies won't let me, the actual legitimate user they're trying to authenticate, use Google Voice, because it's "so dangerous and spoofable, unlike real SIM cards". Hopefully this helps a little bit in driving that point home.

Unfortunately that's part of the reason sim farms exist.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#124

Post by manoDev »

pookha wrote: post #108
roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).

[flagged]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#125

Post by imcritic »

pookha wrote: post #108
roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).

[flagged]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#126

Post by pjc50 »

jonnybgood wrote: post #115
bongodongobob wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people are getting fired over making comments about Charlie Kirk on social media.

By the government?

No, but by Party supporters running campaigns against their employers. Or by the use of the administrative state to pressure the employers.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#127

Post by singpolyma3 »

lxgr wrote: post #102
nikcub wrote: post #24

Paying for residential / mobile proxy[0] traffic for scraping is becoming more common - this is what I always imagined the other end of the mobile part looked like. [0] https://oxylabs.io/products/mobile-proxies

Wow, I knew there were residential proxies for sale (for bypassing geofenced VOD content etc.), but I didn't know that was a thing for mobile data yet. Is it time to stop treating somebody's IP address as an authentication factor yet?

That time was always

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#128

Post by rs186 »

chinathrow wrote: post #14
immibis wrote: post #5

First thing I thought when reading it. This story makes no sense. Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. Having lots of phones (even in a rack-mount form factor) isn't illegal. Even if the phone network could conceivably be DoSed with that many phones all calling at once, it's not illegal unless you actually do that or intend to do it. And their other justification was that this equipment could be…

> Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. What about sending spam and threaths over one of these SIMs? I'm pretty sure that warrants legal action.

Have we actually established that they are used for sending spam? It's very likely, but the press release does not provide any evidence of that. All we know is that they could be used for spam.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#130

Post by contrarian1234 »

alansammarone wrote: post #116
contrarian1234 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you caring a lot doesn't change reality in your favor. You get one vote that you can exercise once a year or so. Thats about all the agency you have on the wider world (and probably rightly so, if its to be proportional to the population) Being informed just enough to choose the less horrible of the two clowns the systems presents you... takes very little effort. Everything past that is a waste of brain cycles. Spend…

That's right, one person caring and not acting doesn't change reality, neither does one person caring and acting (most of the time). A relatively small number of people caring and acting, however, can change the course of history. While it is in nobody's interest to care, individually, we're all better off if we care and act just a little bit .

i assume caring and acting here you mean in the context of larger issues. bc effort spent on your immediate world definitely does change reality

there is no mechanism past voting to change the big picture. Nor should there be. The person going around with the megaphone convincing other people their right inherantly feels their feelings are more right than others'

And you dont need to care an aweful lot when it comes to voting. Any caring past that is basically like getting worked up about the weather

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