The Secret Service says it has uncovered what it’s calling “a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York Tri-state area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials.” The news was announced, in part, over at the right wing propaganda website run by an overt white supremacist billionaire:

There are, however, some red flags that this is being over-hyped for attention and effect. Including a lot of completely unsupported language about what this tech “could be” used for.

In its press release, the Secret Service claims to have discovered around 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites. The press release makes some vague hints of the networks having connections to known nation state actors:

“While forensic examination of these devices is ongoing, early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement.”

I strongly suspect they stumbled into some mob-connected scam ring or textbot farm, and are over-hyping this for dramatic effect. The announcement is super vague, and while the Secret Service claims this network could have been used to disrupt communications ahead of an upcoming General Assembly UN meeting, there’s no evidence of that, and a lot of the hardware was collected over a 35 mile range:

“These devices were concentrated within 35 miles of the global meeting of the United Nations General Assembly now underway in New York City. Given the timing, location and potential for significant disruption to New York telecommunications posed by these devices, the agency moved quickly to disrupt this network.”

There are a lot of things within 35 miles of the UN, including a plethora of Dunkin’ Donut locations.

While this all sounds scary, it seems extremely unlikely that this collection of 100,000 SIM cards in use over this broad of an area could have ever meaningfully impacted cellular communications in New York City, which sees between nine and twelve million cellular users every day.

The mainstream headline coverage of the find (which again, included no supporting evidence of any kind that NYC was at actual, serious risk), were all appropriately hyperbolic, treating the threat to the UN and NYC itself as some sort of proven. None bothered to ask questions of any network engineers, or point out that the Secret Service provided literally zero supporting evidence for its bolder claims:

Cops routinely lie, and our consolidated corporate mainstream journalism genuinely sucks at pointing that out. But there’s also ongoing evidence of normalcy bias, wherein the press seemingly forgets that the U.S. government has also now been taken over by radical authoritarian zealots who have absolutely zero reservations about lying about everything, constantly.

---

From Techdirt via this RSS feed