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perihelions 8 hours ago

Is there a less clickbait-y source? There's no tangible link to the United Nations described in the article; that seems to be a gratuitous flourish.

> "several locations within a 35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters"

That's the entirety of New York City!

edit to add: This very weird part was actually lifted from the USSS press release,

> "These devices were concentrated within 35 miles of the global meeting of the United Nations General Assembly now underway in New York City."

https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2025/09/us-s... ("U.S. Secret Service dismantles imminent telecommunications threat in New York tristate area")

dang 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We've taken the UN out of the title now.

JdeBP 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It does seem like the sort of PR-rewrite for a press release that results in distances measured in football fields.

Looking at a map, a 35 mile as-the-crow-flies (and as the cell network signal flies) radius of the U.N. Secretariat building almost gets one to Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, in one direction and past Stamford, Connecticut, in another.

tbrownaw 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It reminds me of those "how to promote yourself" things about say turning "did routine performance optimizations on the website" into "saved the company $ZZZ million" and such.

kylecazar 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I read they were in Armonk, Greenwich, Jersey and Queens. A perimeter around Manhattan.

The article:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/23/us/swatting-investigation-ser...

macNchz 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Armonk and Greenwich don't really make sense if the idea was to create a perimeter around Manhattan.

kylecazar 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The idea being there were caches to the West (Jersey), North (Armonk and Greenwich) and East (Queens).

The article mentions a "circle around NYC's cellular network infrastructure".

AlanYx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's worth highlighting that that link suggests this may be linked to foreign states rather than just garden-variety organized crime ("...early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors...").

agwa 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That probably just means that some foreign states were among the customers of these SIM farms.

ghostpepper 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not a lot more detail but a better source in general https://therecord.media/secret-service-cellular-network-disr...

formerly_proven 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Concentrated within this 10000 km² area" sounds not nearly as impressive. Granted, "concentrated within 35 miles" sounds already rather dilute when talking about mobile phones.

nathanielbennet 4 hours ago | parent [-]

[dead]

wildzzz 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That quote comes directly from the Secret service press release lol

kentm 5 hours ago | parent [-]

News organizations should not uncritically repeat press releases like these. It is an ethical failure to do so.

5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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pyuser583 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sorry to be nitpicky, but the US Secret Service really, really prefers the acronym "USSS" over "SS."

perihelions 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

(I've removed the distraction).

6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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emeril 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

jacquesm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

pyuser583 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They are, colloquially speaking, a "three letter agency." I think they should compromise with "USS".

dylan604 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But that moniker is already used for military war ships like the USS Enterprise

rollcat 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Followed by "Enterprise".

6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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pavel_lishin 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

lyu07282 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

puttycat 6 hours ago | parent [-]

What is nonsense about this story?

agwa 6 hours ago | parent [-]

A "35-mile radius of the United Nations headquarters" includes literally all of New York City and then some, making the supposed connection to the UN meeting extremely tenuous.

This looks exactly like a "SIM farm" operation, which rents out access to real mobile numbers, usually for the purpose of spamming or fraud. Yet there's no mention of this possibility.

lyu07282 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Thank you, exactly this^

There are stories of these SIM farms all the time, here is an example with very similar gear: https://www.vice.com/en/article/video-ukraine-busts-alleged-...

These stories are always sensationalized when their primary purpose by enlarge is probably just spam.

thenthenthen 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The gear for those interested seems to be this: https://ejointech.shop/products/ejointech-4g-16-port-gsm-voi...