Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
gaoshan
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 leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable."
It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice.
Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible.
The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism.
I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.
robertgraham
The "Washington Game" is described the Society of Professional Journalists. https://www.spj.org/spj-ethics-committee-position-papers-ano...
Citing anonymous sources is not established ETHICAL practice, it's corruption of the system. The roll of the journalist is to get sources on the record, not let them evade accountability by hiding behind anonymity. Anonymity is something that should be RARELY granted, not routinely granted as some sort of "long established practice".
What is the justification for anonymity here? The anonymous source is oath bound not to reveal secrets, so what is so important here that justifies them violating their oath to comment on an ongoing investigation? That's what we are talking about, if they are not allowed to comment on an ongoing investigation, then it's a gross violation of their duty to do so. The journalist needs to question their motives for doing so.
We all know the answer here, that they actually aren't violating their duty. They aren't revealing some big secret like Watergate. They are instead doing an "official leak", avoiding accountability by hiding behind anonymity. Moreover, what the anonymous source reveals isn't any real facts here, but just more spin.
We can easily identify the fact that it's propaganda here by such comments about the SIM farms being within 35 miles of the UN. It's 35 miles to all of Manhattan. It's an absurd statement on its face.
smachiz
The article you cited does not agree with your assertions. It specifically tells you how and when to evaluate the use of an anonymous source.
If you don't ever use anonymous sources, many fewer people will talk to you. Being on the record about something that will get you fired, will get you fired - and then no one talks to journalists.
What separates actual ethical journalists from the rest is doing everything the article you cited suggests - validating information with alternative sources, understanding motives, etc.
mcny
You don't have to use every single source you talk to in your article though. Sure, I will grant my neighbor's dog anonymity but I won't include his opinion in my article at all.
jazzyjackson
Totally. If there's something to whistleblow then whistleblow, don't just gossip at a bar to a journalist.
me-vs-cat
> The anonymous source is oath bound not to reveal secrets
When you say this, what oaths are you specifically thinking about?
glenstein
One of the more sober assessments in this entire thread, and closely aligned with how I experienced it. It's not nothing to stress the fact that it was pretty far away from the UN and that it's not obvious why a case of SIM cards would enable surveillance (seems more like it would anonymize an individual bad actor). 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.
rpdillon
> 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 Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.
aerostable_slug
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 too feel this is weird.
glenstein
>Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.
This is a bizarre new take that seems to be making the rounds. Not that they are right or wrong but they've been a staple of national security communication and reporting for as long as once followed the news, which for me is dating back to the George W. Bush admin. Glenn Greenwald in his heyday had a field day ripping apart credulous NSA wiretapping reporting that relied on unnamed officials. In fact I think he popularized the idea that the pervasiveness of such quotes was so widespread that they constituted a systematic problem with national security reporting. Not that I think it's necessarily a good practice but I wouldn't say it's presence in a story constitutes a "tell" that anything about the story is unusual.
garyfirestorm
Honestly the mechanism is missing. Having hundreds of SIM card or a physical device is not a conclusive proof of anything. Show us the attack vector - exactly how will this cause problem.
onetimeusename
I think it's a form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
The NYT article is not sufficiently critical (of something) so it is government propaganda but in other times and places the NYT was not propaganda.
michael1999
Judith Miller taught me that either the NYT is totally corrupt, or easily misled. It is completely reasonable to place almost zero weight on stories they report on "national security" from nothing but anonymous sources from the intelligence community.
Real stories have real evidence.
otterley
No journalistic institution is perfect. And, there are indeed journalists who cut corners, tell misleading narratives, or are too credulous.
However, there have been important and sometimes shocking stories that have been told thanks to reporting based on trustworthy, anonymous sources. The Pentagon Papers is a textbook example.
michael1999
You completely miss my complaint. Perhaps I was unclear. The Pentagon Papers is the exact opposite! Ellsberg actually shared the documents; there were literal "papers" involved in the Pentagon Papers. That's the "real evidence" I demand.
Off-the-record conversational, "I'd never lie to you" BS, from anonymous sources in the "intelligence community" is a lead to investigate, not a story. They weren't called the Pentagon Whispers.
undefined
senectus1
DJT has shown us all that "Corrupt" and "Incompetent" are two sides of the same coin.
snickerbockers
>Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib).
And what, pray tell, is the major scandal in this case? The source isn't alleging any impropriety or illegal activity. Anonymous sources are for stories which are being suppressed or lied about, not for investigations which have not yet publicly been announced due to pending litigation. If there's no obvious motive for why the source would want to be anonymous then all you're reporting on is rumor and gossip.
themafia
> The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it.
They should also have editorial standards that judge the quality of the information and then decide whether to even print it or not. In this case, without a second source, it probably should /not/ have been printed.
Uehreka
That’s exactly what those guidelines say: https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-new-york-times-anonymous...
> What we consider before using anonymous sources:
> How do they know the information?
> What’s their motivation for telling us?
> Have they proved reliable in the past?
> Can we corroborate the information they provide?
> Because using anonymous sources puts great strain on our most valuable asset: our readers’ trust, the reporter and at least one editor is required to know the identity of the source. A senior newsroom editor must also approve the use of the information the source provides.
Is there a particular change you’re proposing?
themafia
>> Can we corroborate the information they provide?
I can only guess, but based on the reporting, it looks like they skipped this guideline.
>> Have they proved reliable in the past?
Which is half the battle. The real question is "have they lied to us in the past?"
PeterStuer
The change I'd propose is that they actually apply them, and not just to stifle cases that do not fit their narrative.
enslavedrobot
How do you know they didn't have multiple confirmations from different anonymous sources? Generally this is the case with high quality journalism (souce: dated a journalist).
themafia
Their own words.
"Secret Service officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity"
Their only stated source is "USSS officials" who bafflingly demand "anonymity." I would expect the reporter to tell those /officials/ they need to allow a direct quote or to provide another source; otherwise, their information simply won't be printed.
It's the difference between being a blind mouthpiece and being a reporter.
boomboomsubban
To me, the article is saying that an "ongoing investigation" is not a valid reason to grant anonymity, not that there are no valid reasons to grant anonymity.
Who is being protected from whom by granting this source anonymity? With your three examples it's clear, but not as much in this case.
SoftTalker
Officials who are not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations, and might get fired if they do, but can't help themselves so they do it anyway under cover of "anonymity."
And honestly, probably everyone in a position to know, does know who the "anonymous" source is, but it's just enough plausible deniability that everyone gets away with it. They get to push their narrative but also pretend they are following the rules that are supposed to protect various parties in the process.
Meanwhile if I were on a grand jury and blabbing to the press every evening about an investigation, I could get in real trouble.
NedF
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.
themaninthedark
So in a meta conversation about news, there was discussion yesterday about social media and speech. One of the main reoccurring threads of conversation was that news should be left to the experts and those vetted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45352213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45354893
If that was the model that society adopted, the fine article would be among the set of data being censored. Robert Graham seems to be competent in his field but he lacks the pedigree that the NYT wants to cite. Even worse, he disagrees with those who the NYT turn to as matter experts: https://substack.com/@cybersect/p-174413355
aedocw
There is a lawyer (Alec Karakatsanis) who has been writing about police driven propaganda for years. His recent book "Copaganda" is fantastic. He carefully breaks down how major papers (NYT is chief among them) create stories that fit a narrative by using very one-sided sources. Like an article on crime written in bad faith where the only people quotes are police, police consultants, and ex-police.
It's a really good book, I wish more people were aware of it and read it.
AdamN
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 next article, most of them will and their managers will encourage it. Maybe you'll get a more in depth story if it makes it to On The Media a week or two later but that's basically all we have at this point which is very sad.
dragonwriter
> 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 are involved vs. other entities in similar factual circumstances (particularly, the use of constructions which separates responsibility for an adverse result from the actor, which is overwhelmingly used in US media when police are the actors—and also, when organs of the Israeli state are—but not for most other violent actors.) This is frequently described as “the exonerative mood” (or, sometimes, “the exonerative tense”, though it is not really a verb tense.)
Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.
dml2135
I think your observations about tense and mood are very true, but you are undervaluing the extent to which someone can do something automatically and out of habit, especially when their paycheck depends on it.
I absolutely believe that a journalist can present two analogous sets of facts in two completely different ways without even consciously realizing it. These assumptions and biases are baked in deep, especially when you are writing day-in and day-out on short deadlines.
gosub100
When the good guy riots it's called "unrest".
chrononaut
> 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 journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative") more so than the argument you're making here.
heavyset_go
It's more perverse than that. Journalists know if they don't toe the party line, their access to voluntary information from law enforcement will be cut off entirely. Hard to write an article when everyone refuses to talk to you.
oezi
I thought insidious means sinister/evil, but what you point out just shows that we as a society don't value news enough to pay for anything more than the 1-4 hours of time invested per news article.
joe_the_user
Police propaganda is serious problem. But this seems like the least appropriate thing to dismiss as "just police propaganda". What's bad about police propaganda is it perpetuates a certain politics by maintain atmosphere of fear as well as pushing certain stereotypes of ethnic groups. But when the police are exaggerating the terrorist potential of actual organized criminals, things seem much muddier. I think people should concerned about organized scammers - their victims are usually the poor, notably. It's true their terrorist potential is overstated but only because they are profit-oriented but it's not like their other activities should be ignored.
EasyMark
Like touch fentanyl and you'll drop dead from your heart exploding?
notmyjob
Prosecutors are worse. Cops are going be cops. Our justice system is where the buck stops, or should.
0xDEAFBEAD
Who else would you have the journalists talk to, in order to get the other side of the story? Criminals?
asveikau
Did you know that the so called "criminals" are also human beings?
leptons
Eyewitnesses. Often the police and the news narrative are very different than eyewitness accounts. Even if everyone knows what happened, it's completely obvious, the news and police still obfuscate.
kmoser
Who better to talk to about crimes than those who commit those very crimes?
serf
well, that's part of the job.
when Barbara Walters was interviewing Fidel Castro , what do you think was going on from the perspective of the United States?
They're not all such prestigious examples, but the point stands.
immibis
Yes? Journalists in the past talked to criminals.
dylan604
of course, a criminal would have no reason to lie.
undefined
horseradish7k
vice did that. a lot.
louwrentius
Copaganda is indeed a good book, recommend.
lupusreal
[flagged]
alansammarone
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, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.
And let's just say this article is not exactly structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say it's wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.
matthewdgreen
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.
firesteelrain
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.
tsimionescu
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.
brk
DDoS the tower? These look like they represent less than the aggregate crowd at MSG, or even a fairly dense office building (of which there are plenty in NYC). Didn't seem like enough to launch a coordinated DDoS attack. Also, just from looking at the base units, it appears the ratio of SIMs to radios/antennas is Many:1, so not all SIMs can be leveraged in a DDoS at any singular time.
mfro
Somehow I doubt telecom infrastructure in NYC is susceptible enough to completely drop service citywide when under attack from one DDoS source. In fact, I suppose this is technically just DoS, because all these SIMs should be served by 1, maybe 2 towers.
ruszki
I don’t know whether it’s possible with modern networks, but it was basically impossible to DDoS a tower with SMSs. Either the tower was unavailable at all times even without text messages, or SMSs never caused a problem. You couldn’t even send many text messages at once, it took a while to send say 50 SMSs, like minutes. I know that the tech stack is different nowadays, but it really depends on prioritisation, which I don’t know much about.
undefined
alansammarone
Ok, that makes sense. I couldn't quite fish that out of the article (there's a lot more being said that obscures it), but you're right. If this is indeed relatively common (at this scale and/or level of sophistication), then that definitely would make it much more likely that this is a PR stunt. Not completely settled, but much more likely.
joe_the_user
Article's subheading is "it's just an ordinary crime". It seem comparable to a situation where you have a gang with a huge weapon cache that gets found and the press says "enough fire power to outgun the police" and someone says "dude, they weren't aiming for the police, just their rivals".
Sure, the press may put a "threat to the nation" spin on things that might be a bit sensational. But the "you're making something out of nothing" claims seem to do the opposite. Criminals with the ability to cause widespread chaos seem worrying even if their may motivation is maintaining their income stream.
skybrian
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.”
55555
It's not complicated. This is a normal sort of criminal enterprise. These rooms filled with SIM boxes are all over the world. The owners of them rent out the service to others -- letting them send 1,000 spam messages for a fee. One of the buyers of the service was indeed using it to threaten a politician. But this represents a tiny fraction (less than 1% of 1% of the SIMs normal use -- which is probably mostly phishing messages and other spam). It is a criminal enterprise and was used as some sort of political threat, but it's probably not set up by Russia or intended for that purpose.
ecocentrik
These enterprises might not be setup by Russia directly but they might be setup by Russian criminal organizations which have been very active in the US over the last 20 years. That nobody in the current administration seem to be concerned with criminal organizations outside of some small or remnant groups from Latin America is very telling all on its own. This administration has never named any Russian gangs in official statements, even while they now dominate in some parts of the US.
aerostable_slug
That's easily falsifiable. Trump's DOJ and Treasury have multiple press releases regarding prosecutions and sanctions against Vory v zakone, thieves-in-law. Just search on either phrase and you'll see them.
Additionally, calling Venezuelan and Mexican cartels like CJNG small or remnant is extremely inaccurate, to be charitable. They are among the largest, best equipped, and most dangerous organized criminals in the world. You don't have be pro-Trump to acknowledge this fact.
notatoad
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.
lxgr
> 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.
singpolyma3
Unfortunately that's part of the reason sim farms exist.
klausa
> 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.
It's always funny to see comments like this; because there's always at least 50/50 chance that the article is from someone that is actually prolific, just that the person has a blind-spot for whatever reason.
That is, also, the case here.
notatoad
Yeah, sometimes the random substack is from somebody really respected, and sometimes it’s just from somebody who writes like they think they should be really respected. And sometimes the respectable people can be wrong too.
But I think it’s wrong to call it a “blind spot”. This is not my industry, I don’t know the names, and I’m not qualified to judge whether the author deserves my implicit trust. So I treat this substack with the same skepticism I would any other substack.
disiplus
yeah, like you go on alibaba and can get them right away. i was even thinking about them like 10 years ago when we had to send transactional sms to our customers to get one instead of paying for somebodies sms gateway.
https://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/faf448fd0d906a15/prod...
kcplate
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 from my perspective, the article is strange in the sense that the author seems pretty intent on splitting enough hairs to prove the secret service wrong. For me, I don’t care if they are wrong about its purpose— If this helps decrease spam messages, great. If it means that cell services are now more reliable in that area, great. If it’s something that could be hijacked and used for terroristic purposes and has now been neutralized, great.
DangitBobby
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.
hakfoo
We need to be especially careful about labeling things a terror threat during the current inflamed security and political situation.
"Freddy No-Lips is burning down Suzy's Bakery because she didn't pay protection money" is not the Reichstag fire and should not be weaponized like it was.
r3trohack3r
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.
palmotea
> 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.
Those independent channels seem far more amenable to "opinion-havers" than "true journalists" (though perhaps the "true journalists" transform into opinion-havers or secondhand-analysts when they change distribution platforms).
> ...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.”
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?
> The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.
I think you're seeing the result of budget cuts.
tsimionescu
> 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 advertisers or the government.
WastedCucumber
This article describes some secret service messaging about busting some basic (possibly?) criminal enterprise, how the NYT amplifies that messaging without question, and names a couple of experts who the author finds questionable (which is the part I'm most unsure about, but honestly I just don't want to have more names to memorize).
After everything the gov't has tried to hype in the last decade (I'm including some things under Biden's term too), and esp. the efforts made in Trump second term, sure seems like it checks out to me.
So maybe you could name one of the conclusions and its premises, and describe how they don't follow. Cause I certainly don't follow what you're on about.
xtiansimon
“…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.
alansammarone
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I just meant more broadly - I think that inevitably, news organizations, as a whole, have more many competing interests - comercial, political, etc. I think that at least some of them at really trying their best to deliver accurate, factual claims. I'm generally less inclined to read opinion pieces, but I certainly get my news from the News, and I have a huge respect for honest journalists. I think they're one of the most under appreciated professions of our age.
nixosbestos
[flagged]
tomhow
Please don't comment like this on HN. These guidelines in particular, ask us to avoid commenting like this:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Please don't post shallow dismissals...
nixosbestos
Cute that another (days+ old) comment of mine was down-modded and flagged at the exact same time you wrote this. You know, the one that stated literal facts and nothing else.
I legitimately read the comment twice and couldn't parse it when I wrote this. I wasn't trying to be rude, I genuinely didn't understand. But pretty sure you don't care. But sure, point taken.
glenstein
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.
alansammarone
...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 not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
Brendinooo
>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.
sbarre
This whole thing reminds me of the 90s when the government would bust some 16 year old hacker kid in his suburban bedroom who was abusing a PBX, and then parade him around like they'd arrested Lex Luthor (the cartoon villain, not the actual hacker) and prevented a global crisis.
IAmBroom
"We just arrested this drug pusher. One of our brave officers got a 0.001 milligram piece of fentynal on his sleeve, but fortunately after being rushed to the Emergency Room we were able to save his life.
"The other 0.003 mg were lost while trying to get them in the evidence bag."
Terr_
Yeah, there are some ridiculous theatrics going on.
> First responders who believe they are overdosing on fentanyl from simply touching it in fact exhibit the exact opposite of the symptoms we would expect. While fentanyl makes you euphoric and slows down your breathing, cops start breathing faster, sweat a lot, and become anxious. “I don’t want to discredit anyone or say they’re faking,” says Dr. Marino. “I do think people are having a true medical emergency when this happens. The symptoms seem most consistent with a panic attack or anxiety or a fear reaction.”
> Some will claim they had to administer naloxone (trade name Narcan), which can reverse an opioid overdose, in order to save their life. But if you are conscious enough to self-administer naloxone, you’re not overdosing on opioids. You would have lost consciousness and barely been breathing.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/...
mewse-hn
I forget what originally opened my eyes to the theatrics of a typical perp walk (probably Grisham) - the cops tip off the reporters, the reporters get their content for the nightly news, the cops use the front door of the station rather than using the parking garage entrance like normal. It's a bizarro red carpet event.
psim1
Your description can only refer to Kevin Mitnick. They threw the book at him to set an example. I remember being amazed at what a hacker he must have been. Later I read about his crimes and thought "that's all?" RIP Mr. Mitnick.
driverdan
No, it's not only Mitnick. He wasn't even a teen when he was arrested.
If you want to read more a good place to start is The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling.
Neil44
"dope on the table"
bilekas
> 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.
stevage
>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.
BlackFly
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.
IncreasePosts
Wouldn't there be repercussions for discussing an ongoing investigation with a journalist?
r3trohack3r
You’re so close to completing the thought
Yes, most newspapers are publishing anonymous quotes from government officials without scrutiny; quotes that are later found to have been completely bogus.
We live in an age of constant memetic warfare and a majority of our content distribution channels have been compromised.
mcintyre1994
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.
Brendinooo
`site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` shows more than one hit.
WastedCucumber
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.
eagleal
Usually it's not allowed for people involved in an ongoing investigation to talk about said investigation. Maybe the US is different.
stevage
The wording I often see is along the lines of "a source who was not authorised to discuss the case publicly".
sixhobbits
That's a long enough phrase to be unique. Journalists often agree to speak to all kinds of sources "on condition of anonymity". Even if you just don't want to be sued by your employer you might not be comfortable being named.
Overall I found the substack author to tell a good story and speak with what seems to be relevant technical experience so I reposted the link that I saw in another hn thread as a separate story, but as other commentors have pointed out it's possible that both he and the original journalist are hyping up conspiracies in both directions (compromised press vs state actor hackers) and actually the truth is often a more boring mid ground (Journalists hyping up stories and shady people doing shady things)
bArray
If the objective is to knock out cell towers, just jam them. It's clearly a SIM farm for middle-man communications. It just happened to be close to where the UN were.
cenamus
Close being 35km.
ChrisMarshallNY
I think it's 35 miles (X 1.6).
marcosdumay
Also "most of them" within 35 miles (~50 km).
boringg
So anywhere in NYC but it must be targeting the UN /s.
Also funny was that it was considered espionage at first ... but they found lots of drugs on site -- clearly not espionage.
nelox
The World Trade Center is/was closer to UNHQ ;)
Edit:ascii emoji fail
lovich
It's super weird how unusual activity done by humans is correlated with dense human population centers.
I cannot conceive of a reason why that would occur
oofbey
Also hard to imagine how this could be used for espionage. Listening in on cell traffic requires defeating security measures in the protocol. Generally something like a 0 day. This might require a single SIM card, but probably not lots of unless there’s something very unusual about the vulnerability that requires lots of valid seeming actors on the network. Plausible I suppose. But “SMS spam” is a vastly more likely explanation than a security hole that can’t be brute forced on the radio.
nikcub
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.
lxgr
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?
singpolyma3
That time was always
lxgr
You know that, I know that, but the only thing that matters is decision makers at big corporations also knowing it.
ghxst
The hardware in the pictures of the NYT article don't resemble what I am familiar with when it comes to mobile data farming, they look like traditional sim equipment for texting.
Animats
Cell phone farm devices are a thing. Here's one you can buy on Alibaba.[1] This is a little more pro looking than the ones seen in New York. It's 20 phones in a 2U rackmount case. Costs $1880, including the phones. Cheap shipping, too.
Lots of variations available. Vertical stack, different brands of Android phones, rackmount, server racks for thousands of phones, software for clicking on ads, training videos. "No code".
Product info:
"only provide box for development or testing use.pls do not use it for illegal"
Description
Package
Each Box purchase includes the hardware (20 Phone motherboard ,USB cable, box power cord, phone motherboard +advanced control management software (15days free,after that $38 a year) download software from our website (in the video)
Whats is Box Phone Farm ? It is a piece of equipment that removes the phone screen/battery/camera/sim slot, integrates them into a chassis, and works with click farm software to achieve group control functions. 1 box contains 20 mobile phone motherboards. Install the click farm software on your computer and you can do batch operations.
Function:
Install the Click Farm software on your PC, and you can operate the device in batches or operate a mobile phone individually. Only one person can control 20 mobile phones at the same time, perform the same task, or perform different tasks separately, and easily build a network matrix of thousands of mobile phones. As long as it is an online project that mobile phone users participate in, they can participate in the control. The voltage support 110v- 220V, and when running the game all the time, one box only consumes about 100 watts.
Ethernet:
[OTG/LAN] can use USB mode, and can also use the network cable of the router to connect the box.Two connection modes can be switched.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/S22-Server-Rack-S8-Bo...
cakealert
You do not use this thing for SMS spamming as a primary objective.
Actual phone farms are for when you need actual phones, such as to run apps.
Sophisticated actors likely roll their own virtualization (w/ masking) solutions.
Animats
Yes, that multi-phone rig may be overkill, but it's cheap.
I'm puzzled about how the phones get their RF signals in and out when that tightly packed in metal boxes, though.
toast0
I think these phones in a rack boxes are likely more oriented towards automation of apps, and can use ethernet via tethering rather than mobile networks. Could probably leave the top of the box off if you need mobile networks to work a bit.
The sim boxes used for bulk messaging / calling from the photos posted yesterday had antennas poking out everywhere. If you wanted these phones to work inside metal cases, you'd probably want an antenna per phone sticking out as well (or a shared antenna, if you've got rf skills)
undefined
JdeBP
The https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 discussion has indeed raised all of the same points.
jandrese
Yeah, the majority of the people in the posts were also highly skeptical of the USSS press release. Some of the media outlets did skip over some of the more outlandish points from that press release, but none of them were willing to call the bullshit for what it was. There is always the slim chance that the USSS has some extra info they didn't release that made this more than just a SIM bank operator who had no KYC program.
The somewhat annoying part is that it seems like it is pretty easy to spot these sorts of SIM farm setups and yet nobody in law enforcement seems to care enough to actually do it.
dang
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments)
I'll put that link in the top text too.
neuronexmachina
Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened:
* some of the US government officials protected by the Secret Service were the targets of swatting
* the USSS found the swatting calls were anonymized by a SIM Farm in/near NYC
* their investigation of the SIM Farm found "300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites"
* it could have hypothetically been used for swatting officials at the UN General Assembly, but that seems to be conjecture by the Secret Service, rather than anything they actually have evidence of
Does that seem consistent with what we know?
hulitu
> Reading between the lines, my guess is something like this happened:
cough 35 miles cough.
Terr_
I don't understand your reply. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the parent-poster?
For what reason are you highlighting that the SIM cards were present within 35 miles of NYC?
undefined
topspin
So if some rando were to just find one of these huge SIM farms, who could they call, and would anything be done?
With the number of radios seen in the photos from the original story, there must have been a great deal of SMS from that structure. That is very easy to spot with low cost equipment: a TinySA[1] and a directional antenna should be sufficient. Hams do "fox hunting" with similarly basic equipment.
Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference.
[1] The more recent versions ($150+) are pretty powerful and can see all 4G/5G bands.
lxgr
> Given the resources of cell operators, the most charitable explanation for how something like this can exist for more than a brief interval is total indifference.
And why should they care?
A paying customer is a paying customer, never mind the health and integrity of the public phone network (which coincidentally also serves as the primary identification and authentication method for ~everybody in the US).
acdha
These are by and large the same companies who created the caller ID forgery problem to save money when deploying VoIP around the turn of the century. Everyone technical knew that was a bad design but the executives were thinking exactly how you described it, collecting payments for all of that extra traffic until legislation became a risk.
lxgr
Was there any specific bad design?
As far as I understand it, it's more of the lack of a design (for authentication) that got us into all that trouble, similar to BGP, Email, and many other protocols that were originally designed with trusted counterparties in mind.
It just so happened that the illusion of mutual trust broke down earlier in the Internet than it did in the international phone network. (Some even still believe in it to this day!)
singpolyma3
SIM farms are probably against the ToS for most carriers, but otherwise they're not fundamentally problematic just massively inefficient
caseysoftware
> 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”.
Yes, we should be skeptical of anything that is entirely sources from anonymous sources.. even if they align with what we want to believe.
And further, I'd love to see reporters start burning sources that lie to them. After all, the source is risking/destroying the reporter's credibility along the way. Unfortunately, we'll never see that as it's all an access game.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
Previously: Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 - Sept 2025 (283 comments)