Comment by 🚀 stack
Re: "Encrypted, Anonymous, could text the entire nation in 12…"
The proud news conference with dozens of SWAT-like heavily armed bastards... That's where your tax money goes to.
In reality, they showed something that maybe had a thousand or two SIM slots with a bunch of antennas. Obviously going to the same tower, so it's not like it's hard to track down and shut down.
Definitely a business selling private phone calls or maybe a scam but, not any kind of 'an operation' to subvert anything.
If the phone companies cared, they would have made this impossible.
2025-09-25 · 7 months ago
11 Later Comments ↓
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-25 at 19:18:
If being a HAM taught me anything, one antenna makes you suspicious. Your average cell tower has a dozen or so, and people set fire to those. Extrapolating a bit and one thousand antennas makes it worse than Hitler. Surprised the facility wasn't nuked.
I'm kidding but only kind of.
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-25 at 19:36:
Trying to figure out how much anonymity a Manhattan apartment with a thousand antennas gives you.
They have to connect to a handful of towers nearby, right?
So if you do anything stupid, they will instantly converge on you.
So I can't imagine it was anything too evil.
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-25 at 19:37:
Also, that many antennas cannot be active all at once. Sounds like someone just bought a bunch of gear.
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · 2025-09-25 at 19:56:
Clearly, it didn't provide all that much anonymity or they wouldn't have been caught. Not that they were necessarily doing anything wrong, but somebody noticed either way.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-25 at 21:05:
I suppose they could have been assembled there to be distributed later. But agreed with you both. They would interfere with one another and slam a handful of towers. Radio direction finding isn't hard especially when you're using infrastructure like cell phones.
🐦 wasolili [...] · 2025-09-26 at 16:45:
"Hackers penetrate and ravage delicate public and privately owned computer systems, infecting them with viruses, and stealing materials for their own ends. These people, they are terrorists." - Agent Richard Gill (Hackers, 1995)
This quote plays in my head whenever I see such news stories.
I searched for "text the nation in 12 minutes" and found this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-secret-service-disrupts-telecom-network-threatened-new-york-city-u-n-general-assembly/
Apparently the network was used by everyone from gang members to foreign government agents. I have to wonder if it was really just one of those "send us crypto and get a virtual phone" services, rather than some state or gang backed network like the article tries to imply
the article says the network was found after it was used to send threats to officials. That furthers my suspicion that it was just a non-KYC virtual phone service, and someone just happened to use it to make threats. nobody would buy 100,000 sim cards to make a few threats.
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-26 at 18:07:
Agreed, some jerk ruined a nice thing doing something dumb.
Also, 100,000 seems exhaggerated, as usual. The photos show devices capable of maybe a few thousand, very optimistically. And it seems there were at least two different groups with a different tech aesthetic.
These guys with guns are used to inflated 'street value', where an ounce of coke you can get for a thousand or two has a 'street value' of $100,000... Gets a lot more news coverage and promotions.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-26 at 18:53:
Now if only they'd find the phone farm that has been sending me TPUSA texts every day for the past 2 weeks. Getting to the point where white lists will be the only way to text me
🐦 wasolili [...] · 2025-09-27 at 06:02:
I wonder if anyone has looked at the uptime for virtual phone services to see if any of them went down when the raid happened.
These guys with guns are used to inflated 'street value', where an ounce of coke you can get for a thousand or two has a 'street value' of $100,000... Gets a lot more news coverage and promotions.
my personal favorite is when they claim that the seized cocaine was very pure, so it simply must have been bought close to the source, so the cartel must be very closely involved. scary, scary, hide your children!
when all it really means is someone took a few hours to wash their coke. of course, if that's discovered, the story pivots to "and the dealer was mixing acetone with the cocaine!" because the media and general public are both scared and confused by solvents.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-27 at 10:26:
Oh no! Acetone sounds like one of those *chemicals* Gwyneth Paltrow warned me about!
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-27 at 12:26:
That's how you make crack babies!
Original Post
Encrypted, Anonymous, could text the entire nation in 12 minutes. — I just saw a newsclip about the Secret Service taking down an apartment full of servers and telecom gear near the UN bulding, apparently designed to target cell phones of public officials. I don't know what that was, but it looked like a high-end amateur server room for a game, maybe. The punchline: Secret Service spokesman (maybe even the head, I don't know), said, nodding meaningfully: "Encrypted, anonymous... It could text...