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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

#561

Post by gosub100 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #327
AdamN wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the…

> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…

When the good guy riots it's called "unrest".

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#562

Post by zer00eyz »

reaperducer wrote: post #536
zer00eyz wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having been a reader of the New York Times for almost 50 years, I can say the New York Times hasn't changed that much. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/07/new-york-times... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-new-york-times-wmd-cov... > To pick a nit, you are correct: This was no investigative journalism. From the NYT article: "James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for European Policy…

The links you posted do not refute my statement. So I ask, how many times have you read the New York Times? As I stated above, I've read it almost daily for nearly 50 years. Do you subscribe? Do you read it regularly? Do you even read it at all? Or just parrot what you've seen on the internet? The remainder of your comment is a non-sequitur, and has nothing to do with what I wrote.

The coverage of WMD's was appalling.

Both the BBC and the Guardian were reporting how fucked up it was, but NYT ra ra America fuck yea just went along with it. There were other us news orgs that spoke up but no traction.

And this is the thing. The NYT isnt doing reporting here. This isnt a presser they are covering where they are quoting cops and their claim on the street value of the drug sized. This is a "confidential source" whos narrative is then supported by a know insider but its made to look like its being fact checked.

Its not. This is not journalism, and if you want to make it that, then you have to admit it's awful. There needs to be a retraction, or better yet a mecupla and some interviews with real technical experts.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#563

Post by philwelch »

bongodongobob wrote: post #504
philwelch wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally, the point people are getting fired for making is that the very circumstances of Charlie Kirk's murder are precisely the circumstances he advocated for. He never advocated murdering people over political disagreements. He disagreed with banning guns, but even the people who advocate banning guns don’t usually openly advocate banning bolt action hunting rifles. The sentiment here is to cheer and laugh at a…

He said that school deaths are worth it to uphold our 2nd amendment rights. So the irony is extremely thick here.

That's the same tradeoff we make with all civil rights.

Lots of people criticized Donald Trump's proposal of a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on", and rightfully so in my opinion. Do you think the irony would be thick if some of those people were murdered by Muslim terrorists?

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#564

Post by chairmansteve »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #401
chrononaut wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice. The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent…

>The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. this a very westerner perspective on society. Ask an Eastern European (like myself) how the vast majority of people are really acting.

Can you elaborate?

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#565

Post by rpdillon »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #550
rpdillon wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments. This is how I feel about the NYT article. So much doesn't add up, and the more I read and investigate, the flakier it becomes. Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the S…

There's a possibility that some of the evidence in the investigation is classified and/or stems from classified sources and methods. If the scammers are mixed up in foreign counterintelligence type stuff (very common with Chinese and Russian cybercriminal actors) then things get murky and people might go off the record because the documents they're reading have classification markings on them. Just a possibility, I t…

One of the challenges here is that there are a lot of explanations that might be completely reasonable that cover all of the weirdness, but it feels like there's too much of it.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#566

Post by ceejayoz »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #543
ceejayoz wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.kbtx.com/2025/09/22/teacher-aide-files-federal-l... The post is reproduced in the article, in its apparent entirety. Zero celebration I can detect. Now what?

Very interesting. I stand corrected. I will note, however, that this is literally the only example I've seen of someone getting fired for a legitimately non-celebratory remark. We've got a legal system for stuff like that. For every single example you could give me, I can give you at least a thousand counterexamples. 99.9% of all the folks being fired are getting fired for being reprehensible.

The fact that finding a responsive example was so easy doesn’t give you a moments pause?

Here’s another. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2025/09/22/bal...

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#567

Post by kcplate »

DangitBobby wrote: post #368
kcplate wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article for me was weird in the sense that it makes the claim that the purpose was of the farms were not necessarily nefarious in a terror sense, but merely criminal. Even suggesting that they could be legitimate (that was a stretch, sim farms in residential apartments? Please.). It also makes the point that its purpose wasn’t to disrupt cell service, although these things can and will disrupt cell services. So f…

If the secret service were involved in policing that had nothing to do with national security, that might be worth reporting on. We should be wary of the expansion of their policing duties.

If a SS advance team for Trump’s UN address were following up on a lead that was based off detected unusual cell activity in the area…seems to me like that would have been within their responsibility profile.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#568

Post by r3trohack3r »

palmotea wrote: post #538
tsimionescu wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product? Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas. Rather than costs, the much bigger obstacle to good journalism is censorship, much of it coming from company leadership, which doesn't want a bad relationship with ad…

> Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas. Come on. It investigative journalism takes a lot of time, and in the mean time, the journalist has bills to pay. An opinion-haver or second-hand news analyst can build a Substack following by picking a theme and pumping out a blog post every couple days, but that's not practical for someone who might…

I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.

Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.

And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense. I suspect people buy these news rooms because their ROI comes from manufacturing consent (power and influence) - not monetizing investigative journalism.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#569

Post by [deleted] »

enslavedrobot wrote: post #524
themafia wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're USSS officials. Officials being the keyword. That a bunch of people who share meetings and prerogative in the organization are saying the same thing is not an indicator of information quality. In fact, I would take it as a negative signal, and would push _much_ harder to get actual detail or corroboration.

I agree. Like I say you have no idea who they talked to or verified the story with. Using the words in a story to justify an opinion, but at the same time saying the story is inaccurate is not logically consistent. No well trained journalist would ever write a story like this without verifying the information in redundant ways. If they didn't do that then they probably already know it's fake and could literally write…

[deleted]

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#570

Post by NedF »

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…

While this comment is true, the bigger/real story is all(?) the media is lying.

Anyone on TikTok has gone down the phone farm rabbit hole. Some of us stay. This is teen level tech. There's phone farm ASMR.

Better question is why this is the best take down of a 'bogus' story on Hacker News?

This comment really should not be top or what Hacker News discusses as a side comment.

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