The story isn't bogus, it's just blown out of proportion. That's unfortunately how most news articles work, especially ones related to crime. The ironic part is that this article is just as much "bogus" with the assumptions it's making.
That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#72Earlier 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.
Normal convention is that an agency will make no comment about any ongoing investigation, because making public comment prior to bringing charges could be prejudicial to the case.
If, for whatever reason, the agency feels like it's not risking its own case and wants to blow its trumpet... it really doesn't matter what the names of the spokespeople for the agency are. They don't need to speak anonymously, as they won't get in trouble with anyone at the agency for saying what the agency told them to say to the press. The NYT could just say "officials said" and not name them.
It is not like there is a whistleblower inside the Secret Service with scuttlebutt to dish, and the NYT need to protect the identity of Deep Throat 2.0... and all they had to say was the spam operation itself didn't pose any threat to the UN conference.
I think what the blog author's arguing is that this phrase is unnecessary detail that just adds intrigue to sell a rather mundane story.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#73> Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate VoIP provider and the mobile phone network.
No. This is not how any of this works
Just use SIP?
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#74I 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 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 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.
That’s all the author is asking us to believe.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#75The story isn't bogus, it's just blown out of proportion. That's unfortunately how most news articles work, especially ones related to crime. The ironic part is that this article is just as much "bogus" with the assumptions it's making.
The story is bogus, the evidence isn’t*
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#76I 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…
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I understood them perfectly so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's a thoughtful high-level overview about the difference between authoritative factual communication and vibes-based speculation. I made a similar point in a thread yesterday about the various disorganized allegations of "fraud" attributed to MrBeast and how they rarely cohere into a clearly articulated harm.
I think scatterbrained, vibes based almost-theories that vaguely imitate real arguments but don't actually have the logical structure, are unfortunately common and important to be able to recognize. This article gets a lot of its rhetorical momentum from simply declaring it's fake and putting "experts" in scare quotes over and over. It claims the article is "bogus" while agreeing that the sim cards are real, were really found, really can crash cell towers, and can hide identities. It also corrects things that no one said (neither the tweet nor the NYT article they link to refer to the cache of sim cards as "phones" yet the substack corrects this phrasing).
The strongest argument makes is about the difference between espionage and cell tower crashing and the achievability of this by non state actors (it would cost "only" $1MM for anyone to do this), but a difference in interpretation is a far cry from the article actually being bogus. And the vagueposting about how quoting "high level experts" proves that the story is fake is so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Sure, the NYT have preferred sources who probably push preferred narratives, but if you think that's proof of anything you don't know the difference between vibes and arguments.
So I completely understand GPs point and wish more comments were reacting in the same way.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#77I 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.
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.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#78The story isn't bogus, it's just blown out of proportion. That's unfortunately how most news articles work, especially ones related to crime. The ironic part is that this article is just as much "bogus" with the assumptions it's making.
If the story is espionage, but it isn't actually espionage then the story is bogus, flimflam, propaganda. Made to make you believe, i mean look, we asked all these experts too. And you are not an expert on this, so better believe us.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#79If it is PR then it seems a bit odd. I suspect most people would care way more about them busting an SMS spam farm than protecting the communications of people at the UN. Maybe it has a specific intended audience, but protecting a UN meeting they're hosting is kinda assumed so I'm not sure who would give them much credit here.
Maybe building a case to send military assets into New York? Breaking up an alleged international spy ring threatening diplomatic meetings could be grounds to deploy types of forces not normally allowed otherwise...
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#80I 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…
“…which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.”
Really? I see a difference between 24h infotainment news and News.
The News I listen to (AM radio) is compacted into fact, point, counterpoint. And that’s it. When it repeats, no more news. I’m old enough to remember this basic News playbook, and it’s not changed on those stations I listen to.