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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#171

Post by eagleal »

Brendinooo wrote: post #60
alansammarone wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...more like an ELI5? Sure. When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green". > One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s…

>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past. I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.

I don't know about US laws, but in most countries agencies/PMs/experts or whoever has access and is involved in the investigation, cannot make a comment if the investigation is ongoing.

Breaching of this, especially as you're making a case, in most cases at best would invalidate the whole case + bring disciplinary actions upon the individual(s) that committed the breach.

Judging by the other comments, looks similar for the US too.

If you're ever partecipated as expert in any investigation or news article you'd know you'd get usually biased hypothesis, if otherwise it meant you wouldn't have the same impact for the news story. Or if you've ever heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#172

Post by thehappypm »

ajross wrote: post #21
hk1337 wrote: post #17

Both scenarios could be right? It could be just a scam bot farm but a scam bot farm with the intention of targeting vulnerable UN delegates with scams not necessarily to disrupt any cell tower?

Why would you need to target "vulnerable UN delegates" from blocks away from the UN, though? Literally anywhere in the US would do. It's literally SMS , the location of the transmitter says nothing about the location of the recipient. No, they put this in lower manhattan because of the cell density there. It makes the fraud harder to detect in all the noise of normal usage.

This farm isn’t anywhere near the UN, though—35 miles away. Which could put it in westchester, connecticut, new jersey, long island..

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#173

Post by criddell »

jsw97 wrote: post #120
sidewndr46 wrote: post #118

Why spend the effort to refute this? No one who is going to believe the original story is going to believe this.

I believed the original story. Now I don’t. So it helped me.

It will never happen, but I'd love to see the NYT follow up their story and pit some of what Graham says against their cadre of experts and see what parts of the story they agree on and which ones they don't.

I would think the people at the Times would want to know if they are just being useful idiots here.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#174

Post by T-A »

ynniv wrote: post #151
alansammarone wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing…

[flagged]

Thank you for reminding me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299539

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#175

Post by tsimionescu »

firesteelrain wrote: post #77
matthewdgreen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The novel information in this article (confirmed by some technical experts on other platforms) is that this kind of SMS scam relay is a well-known sort of enterprise. I wasn’t aware of this, although it doesn’t surprise me. Once you have that context, the rest of the NYT article kind of falls apart by itself.

I wouldn’t say the NYT article falls apart it is just less sensationalistic. Very likely as this substack article suggests that these SIM farms do knock out SMS from time to time because they DDoS the tower. So that part is correct. Nation state ? Ok maybe far fetched. These farms are not out of reach of a normal person who over time purchases the technical pieces. It’s an investment.

The NYT article fell apart the moment they quoted the silly "35 miles from UN headquarters" quote by the SS without pointing out it's an absurd attempt at sensationalizing. No need to read further than that before figuring out it's a propaganda piece.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#176

Post by eagleal »

WastedCucumber wrote: post #62
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also seems to be the first time NYT has used that form of words according to Google `site:nytimes.com “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”` has no earlier results Other outlets have used “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation” before though.

Just in a cursory check into some of the other articles using the phrase, it seems like they're mostly cases where an investigator might encounter retaliation for speaking out. It's hard to imagine that happening for the present example.

Usually it's not allowed for people involved in an ongoing investigation to talk about said investigation. Maybe the US is different.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#177

Post by ghm2199 »

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…

Perhaps none of us have living memory of how when the chips are down there is no place to turn to but a source of truth. For every propaganda(ish) outlet, there is a place you can check for real news NYTimes,CNN,Fox juxtaposed to things like propublica,snopes or icij.

One friend got taken in by a fake news story and rued the internet is full of fake news and propaganda that spreads in a minute, I am so dismayed, how can I know what is real?. a friend replied: the internet is wonderful too you can check in under a minute if something is fake.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#178

Post by AnimalMuppet »

narrator wrote: post #143
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 is the completely different information universes left and right live in in America. It's difficult to have a conversation with someone on the other side of the political divide because they believe a completely different set of facts. Meanwhile, in China, everyone knows the news is B.S and they only trust information they get directly. In the past, before the Internet, there was a lot more time inves…

In US politics, while one side may lie considerably more than the other, neither side is really committed to truth. One is selective in the truth and distorts the interpretation to push their narrative; one just blatantly lies to push whatever is their position of the moment.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#179

Post by r3trohack3r »

alansammarone wrote: post #41

I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenti…

I believe the kind of journalism you’re hinting at is practically dead in what many people are referring to when they say “the news.” It’s hard to determine if I agree with your stance though since you didn’t actually define what you meant by news organizations; mind listing a few of your favorite sources of news and trusted commentators? If they’re quite good, it’ll help people find reliable sources of descriptive accuracy!

But a meta point: Most commercial news rooms have become propoganda arms for The Party that churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.” The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.

I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#180

Post by BlackFly »

stevage wrote: post #165
bilekas wrote: post #15

> That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable. Yeah makes a lot of sense when framed like this, the timing of the secret service of all people busting this 'huge' operation was far too suspicious.

>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles Are they just making up these "normal journalistic principles"? I see different newspapers publishing quotes anonymously under similar conditions all the time.

The author explains it in the next sentence.

> It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable.

In general, you can spot this kind of propaganda by realizing that the anonymous source is actually promoting the government's position and so isn't actually in danger. I.E. they aren't a whistleblower, they have no reason to fear repercussions.

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