Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

cybersect.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 656 posts

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#371

Post by skybrian »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #64
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…

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.

That sounds plausible, but could you link to those technical experts? I never heard of the author of this blog and he’s all “trust me I’m a hacker.”

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#372

Post by ctrlp »

alansammarone wrote: post #103
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…

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…

[dead]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#373

Post by tracerbulletx »

nostrademons wrote: post #364
whatamidoingyo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.

> I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. The parenthetical is doing a lot of work. The only real truth is that which you experience with your own senses. For everything else, you are choosing to believe somebody else's truth. It's worth remembering that whenever you consume media.

You can't really believe your own senses either. Science is our only systematic way to arrive at reliable information, you really can't know anything, but you can construct reproduceable experiments that increase your confidence enough that those facts can be relied upon to construct more complex theories by linking experimental results together, and those links increase your confidence because their co-occurrences help validate each other and when experimental results diverge you can also reduce your confidence deconstruct or iterate on the theory.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#374

Post by marcosdumay »

dcow wrote: post #337
marcosdumay wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be conflicting narratives on the press about things like if the COVID vaccines work or not, or if the disease kills people or not. Or if the world is warming.

Why not? Two reasonable people can disagree about the cause of some complex issue even without the media.

Because there is no real doubt about those.

If some media comes disagreeing, they are blatantly lying. Also, there should not be diverging narratives about whether if you jump off a cliff, you will fall.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#375

Post by oceanplexian »

oofbey wrote: post #279
throwaway894345 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?

I agree it’s healthy for Americans to be more skeptical of journalism, especially the sources they think they trust. But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped. Sure reporters are lazy and will run an article quickly about a breaking story they get from a government tip. But if they find out it was wrong the editors will be pissed and likely print an update or…

> But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped

The NYT intentionally runs stories that are highly dubious or they know to be false, then later issue a small retraction in a footnote.

The latest fake news they published was the story around Zohran Mamdani where they used hacked data from Colombia University to claim he checked "black" on the admission documents to gain an unfair advantage. That's because they are partisan hacks. I don't necessarily like Zohran, but he represented a threat to mainstream Democrats therefore the NYT had to do something about him.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#376

Post by dmbche »

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…

Look up Manufacturing Consent - good read!

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#377

Post by KyleBerezin »

jacquesm wrote: post #358

That story was overblown. But it wasn't bogus. SIM farms exist, this was one of them and it definitely wasn't put there for the general good of the population. They're common enough that the UK has specific legislation targeting acquisition and use of these devices. Which parts of the story were embellished and who they were embellished by is an interesting question but the degree to which the original story being bo…

Well put. I think both the NYT and this blog post are stretching for conclusions.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#378

Post by dekhn »

marcosdumay wrote: post #374
dcow wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Two reasonable people can disagree about the cause of some complex issue even without the media.

Because there is no real doubt about those. If some media comes disagreeing, they are blatantly lying. Also, there should not be diverging narratives about whether if you jump off a cliff, you will fall.

there is more scientific doubt about the true effectiveness of COVID vaccines than you think.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#379

Post by levocardia »

gaoshan wrote: post #262

There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "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 not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official…

Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?

Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous sources within the administration all the time! Just look at all the reporting about the Musk/Rubio dust-ups!

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#380

Post by hamburglar »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #208
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…

This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.

One thing that’s interesting is that if you intentionally consume media with different viewpoints, you can often glean what’s true and what’s not by comparing how they each spin the story, because the opposite sides will almost never be in coordinated collusion about their misrepresentations.
Post reply on HN