[levocardia]

Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?

Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous sources within the administration all the time! Just look at all the reporting about the Musk/Rubio dust-ups!

[moscoe]

They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda. The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders.

The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.

[reaperducer]

They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda.

Citation needed. The New York Times has very strict rules about using anonymous sources. It's not some scary, shadow journalism effort. They publish their rules for anonymous sources right on their web site. Google is your friend.

The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.

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. I can also say that I look at it with a much more critical eye than most because of my journalism degrees and decades of experience as a journalist.

A major problem with society is that some anonymous low-karma recent-joiner rando spews things on HN like "The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders" and people believe it for no reason other than it tickles the part of their brain that agrees with it. Not because of any kind of objectivity, analysis, proof, or thought.

To pick a nit, you are correct: This was no investigative journalism. This was a routine daily story covering an announcement by a government agency. If you don't know the difference between the two, then you lack the knowledge and understanding required to be critical of any sort of journalism.

[zer00eyz]

> 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 Analysis in Washington, said that only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation, including Russia, China and Israel."

Using the agreeable expert isn't "reporting" its BAD journalism. It's WMD's all over again.

[reaperducer]

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.

[zer00eyz]

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.

[rpdillon]

You're glossing over the fact that the journalist is not technical at all (she covers policy stuff) and so she can't be adversarial at all in the technical realm. But she's also not adversarial in any way I can see. Off the top of my head, from memory:

    How can you get browsing history off of SIM cards?
    If this case is historically large, how many other SIM farm cases as USSS investigated?
    If this is so unusual and dangerous, why does McCool say there's no reason to believe there aren't a lot more around the country?
    Why is the USSS only telling us about this the day of Trump's speech at the UN, when the SIM farms were found back in August?
    What evidence do these experts have that this could have only been pulled off by a nation-state? Is it that it is technically sophisticated? Is it because it cost so much? Is it because the hardware can't be easily obtained?
    What degree does this expert hold, and in what subject?  They heavily rely on an "expert" that has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984.  What did he study?
    Is it even technically possible to have a SIM farm 35 miles away from a target and cause the towers to crash?
    Why is the journalist for the NYT choosing to repeat statements about this being a threat to the UN when there is zero evidence this has anything to do with the UN at all?
    Why are officials from the agency publishing the press release being cited anonymously?

I could go on, but there are so many pieces that don't fit. This was the first article I've read, maybe ever, where I got a very strong vibe of "This is U.S. government propaganda!"

> A major problem with society is that some anonymous low-karma recent-joiner rando spews things on HN

Not so sure about that. Sometimes the message is delivered in a sloppy way. I'm working here to not deliver my message sloppily, to show why simply disregarding what you read from a rando might not be the best.

> Not because of any kind of objectivity, analysis, proof, or thought.

Exactly my concern.

[f33d5173]

News is a good source for facts. If they say the sky is blue, I would have no reason to doubt them. But if they say the sky is turning from blue to pink, and we should all be worried because this might be a sign of the end times, I wouldn't get up from my chair.

I found the focus on the source being anonymous odd as well. I think the correct lesson is that substacks have just as much propensity towards being propaganda as the nyt does.

[elzbardico]

> Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?

Humm... No?

[nostrademons]

Uh, my recent experience is that "Some guy on Substack" is a significantly more reliable source than "The Literal New York Times".

Gel-Mann Amnesia affect applies here: every time I've seen mainstream media cover a subject that I have personal experience or expertise with, it's been shockingly inaccurate. This includes the NYTimes. It includes random guys on Substack too, but I've found that random guys on Substack when speaking about their area of expertise are actually pretty accurate. It's left to the reader to determine whether some random guy on Substack is actually speaking to an area of their expertise, but other comments here have attested that the author actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to SIM farms.

[deelowe]

And what exactly makes "Robert Graham" such an expert in this particular domain? I don't know who this person is or why I should trust their personal blog over the NYT. The article itself is rather hand-wavy in it's assessment of the report. The thesis is essentially "bot farms use lots of sims & this is an example of using lots of sims, therefore this is a bot farm and not espionage."

[nostrademons]

Here's his bio from the RSA conference:

https://www.rsaconference.com/experts/robert-graham

BlackICE was a big personal firewall 20 or so years ago - you can read all the CNet/ZDNet reviews if you search for it. You can also look at his code (for a port scanner that can scan the entire Internet in 5 minutes, whew) on GitHub:

https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan

[deelowe]

Thank you for sharing. I recall blackice. I'm not seeing anything here would lead me to believe he's an expert in this particular domain though, which is more about nation state intelligence operations than it is anything technical.

[nostrademons]

I think his point is that it's not about nation-state intelligence operations, and that the capabilities claimed here are garden-variety cybercriminal operations. You or I could set up something very similar, if we were willing to participate in a dodgy business.

And by some basic napkin math and a few Google searches, he appears to be right. Prepaid sim cards are about $5/each [1]. A 16-port SimBerry server is $499 [2]; their full-fledged servers are "contact us" for pricing, but support up to 18,000 SIM cards [3]. Assuming their enterprise solutions are cheaper on a per-SIM basis than retail, that's about $35/SIM in hardware costs. For $100K in startup capital, you can run a 3000-SIM farm. And then, like this article suggests, once you get started you reinvest the profits: if you assume each SIM card gives you 1000 txts, then if you charge 2c/txt your $5 investment becomes $20 and you can expand your operations accordingly.

I wonder sometimes if, when it comes to cybercrime, "[Russia/North Korea/China/Iran] did it!" is actually code for "The FBI has no idea who did it, but if we said that it would encourage all sorts of script kiddies to do this for profit, so we might as well blame it on our nation-state level adversaries." Many of the hacks in question (eg. ransomware) are not out of reach of a lone malcontent in their 20s with some tech skills.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=prepaid+sim+card

[2] https://www.simberry.com/offers

[3] https://www.simberry.com/equipment/sim-server

[istjohn]

Both can be bad. The NYT absolutely publishes some slop from time to time, and I'm inclined to believe this is one such occasion. But this Substack essay isn't a measured correction and has its own mistruths and exaggerations. In other words, there's a middle ground between total credulity and solipsistic nihilism.

[immibis]

Maybe on average, but we've also learned there are too many times when "The Literal New York Times" either repeats propaganda for money, or literally just makes shit up.

[abirch]

When has the NYTimes made shit up?

[glenstein]

I also would appreciate an answer to this. It's one thing to say anonymous sources like to offer quotes when they can push a preferred narrative. It's another to say they straight up make things up, and this lazy attitude of reflexively accusing NYT of fabrication like it's the apex of wisdom seems to come from a place of not understanding their processes or history.

There's bias in the sense of selecting stories and editorial judgment, and narrative emphasis. But people have gotten way too comfortable just reflexively claiming stories are fabrications, which I think in truth is extremely rare.

[immibis]

There was one particular really important story a few years ago that massively affected global geopolitics, making a lot of people very angry, and they later admitted they just made it the fuck up.

[glenstein]

I actually accept that as a legitimate example, and I do think that has important implications for the topic in question if we're thinking about something coming on its second anniversary in a few weeks. I don't think it's characteristic of NYT's reporting in other areas.

I know this is where you point to Murry Gellman amnesia but despite its fancy name I don't think I agree with its thesis, and in fact find it to be an incredibly damaging ethos in the misinformation environment we currently inhabit.

[tourge]

to be fair, most of the people who could give you an answer have probably been banned/shadowbanned from this website (this website has a very blatant zionist influence, as does NYT)

[michael1999]

Judith Miller reported total fabrications and helped lead the entire country into a disastrous invasion of Iraq.

[abirch]

For some reason I feel like reporting fabricated evidence is magnitudes different than fabricating evidence (making shit up.) From what I've briefly read is that Judith Miller reported on evidence that Ahmad Chalabi provided her: https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/

I'm not saying that the NYTimes doesn't have an agenda (it has one) nor do I believe that they are infallible. I'm just wondering when they've manufactured information like the days of yellow journalism or the likes of Stephen Glass or Janet Cooke

[michael1999]

Correct. I got lost in the threads, and lost context here.

I have never heard of the NYT deliberately inventing falsehoods. They do have a history of credulously repeating falsehoods as truth to serve an editorial goal. I’ll grant that distinction.

Note that does nothing to defend the story in question.

[abirch]

I believe the story in question is overly hyped. I don't think anyone was planning on destroying the phone system. It seems like the secret service found a text spam ring and is trying to make it more nefarious.

[throwaway74628]

Judith Miller re: Saddam’s WMDs