4 ms·

I've seen this particular article before and despite me being fairly liberal, seems kind of lazy for journalism. It's a bunch of heresay with no conclusion, but

I've seen this particular article before and despite me being fairly liberal, seems kind of lazy for journalism. It's a bunch of heresay with no conclusion, but clearly wants to draw the reader's opinion. The author admits that they aren't a place with an investigation budget and "someone else" should look into it. This damages the story - which seems likely to be happening to some degree - to the point where it is completely lost to someone who isn't fully aligned with the conclusion ahead of time. I mean, a simple technical fact check of one paragraph that they could have enhanced by speaking with someone who understands these things: > would talk about their cellphone signals cutting out just as drones circled above. OK, plausible > Mobiles would switch themselves off and on again -- not in pocket but in hand. If they mean turn on and off, unlikely. Maybe rebooting via DDoS on the baseband, but we're jumping into suppositions and inventions here. > Camera apps were opened out of nowhere Pretty unlikely > and batteries would drain by enormous percentages, killing the phones in minutes, rather than the steady decline of any device pinging back and forth searching for a signal That seems plausible. DDoS on a phone by making the bandwidth burn power.

rsync 10y ago
""That seems plausible. DDoS on a phone by making the bandwidth burn power." That's not what is happening. IMSI catchers are well known to ask their victim handsets to transmit at full power - which your phone almost never has to do normally.
- mmastrac 10y ago
  This is a typo - I meant baseband.
natch 10y ago
>> Camera apps were opened out of nowhere >Pretty unlikely I thought the same thing, that this is pretty unlikely. But then, most of my personal experience is with iOS, which is pretty well buttoned down. With Android on the other hand, all bets are off. We can't even talk about the security of Android sensibly because there are so many old and unpatched versions out there. So from that perspective, maybe it's not as far fetched as it sounds.
- kazagistar 10y ago
  If you are hacked, why would they open an app, instead of doing things in the background?
  - omginternets 10y ago
    simplicity and expediency?
afreak 10y ago
Unless you have access to a mobile phone's baseband source code, you cannot really trust anything about its level of security. This was discussed on HN a while back and comes up quite often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643
throwaway982749 10y ago
The article fails to mention that Standing Rock is currently a very cold place. From what I can tell, it's been below freezing for weeks now. In those conditions, batteries can drain much faster, report capacity incorrectly and then fail unexpectedly. It's probably magnified by all the extra work the radio has to do to find and hold a signal from the overloaded rural cell towers. https://www.getorchard.com/blog/iphone-battery-dies-in-cold-weather/ https://www.getorchard.com/blog/iphone-battery-dies-in-cold-... And anyone who's used a phone in extreme cold with gloves on knows that touchscreens can do a lot of weird things, including opening apps unexpectedly. My hunch is that a large part of the reports are hearsay by visiting protestors who aren't used to the conditions.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Nice try, NSA. :)
pdkl95 10y ago
> seems kind of lazy for journalism Note this important comment at the end of the article: ... we've really got to get back to writing about Back To The Future. Some site with an "investigation" budget should probably take it from here. This is Cracked. While their writing is often a lot better than their clickbait headlines suggest, they are still primarily a comedy/culture based site. This story is way outside their usual style, and they know that. Why isn't this story being covered by other reporters that do have experience investigating government, technology, the oil industry, etc? Cracked is reporting on this because it's important and the only coverage the larger media has given to the pipeline protests has ranged from "nothing" to "reading the police press release".
- asciimo 10y ago
  Yeah, this isn't the Cracked I grew up with. The only journalism of theirs I'm familiar with featured Nanny Dickering (http://cracked.wikia.com/wiki/Nanny_Dickering http://cracked.wikia.com/wiki/Nanny_Dickering).
dawnerd 10y ago
You're expecting a lot from cracked which until recently was owned by Demand Media. Having worked there, I wouldn't trust a single thing they put out. Edit: I don't mean to say it's not possible this happened, just you should take their reporting with a grain of salt.

rsync 10y ago

""That seems plausible. DDoS on a phone by making the bandwidth burn power." That's not what is happening. IMSI catchers are well known to ask their victim handsets to transmit at full power - which your phone almost never has to do normally.

mmastrac 10y ago
This is a typo - I meant baseband.

natch 10y ago

>> Camera apps were opened out of nowhere >Pretty unlikely I thought the same thing, that this is pretty unlikely. But then, most of my personal experience is with iOS, which is pretty well buttoned down. With Android on the other hand, all bets are off. We can't even talk about the security of Android sensibly because there are so many old and unpatched versions out there. So from that perspective, maybe it's not as far fetched as it sounds.

kazagistar 10y ago
If you are hacked, why would they open an app, instead of doing things in the background?
- omginternets 10y ago
  simplicity and expediency?

afreak 10y ago

Unless you have access to a mobile phone's baseband source code, you cannot really trust anything about its level of security. This was discussed on HN a while back and comes up quite often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643

throwaway982749 10y ago

The article fails to mention that Standing Rock is currently a very cold place. From what I can tell, it's been below freezing for weeks now. In those conditions, batteries can drain much faster, report capacity incorrectly and then fail unexpectedly. It's probably magnified by all the extra work the radio has to do to find and hold a signal from the overloaded rural cell towers. https://www.getorchard.com/blog/iphone-battery-dies-in-cold-weather/ https://www.getorchard.com/blog/iphone-battery-dies-in-cold-... And anyone who's used a phone in extreme cold with gloves on knows that touchscreens can do a lot of weird things, including opening apps unexpectedly. My hunch is that a large part of the reports are hearsay by visiting protestors who aren't used to the conditions.

brokenmachine 10y ago
Nice try, NSA. :)

pdkl95 10y ago

> seems kind of lazy for journalism Note this important comment at the end of the article: ... we've really got to get back to writing about Back To The Future. Some site with an "investigation" budget should probably take it from here. This is Cracked. While their writing is often a lot better than their clickbait headlines suggest, they are still primarily a comedy/culture based site. This story is way outside their usual style, and they know that. Why isn't this story being covered by other reporters that do have experience investigating government, technology, the oil industry, etc? Cracked is reporting on this because it's important and the only coverage the larger media has given to the pipeline protests has ranged from "nothing" to "reading the police press release".

asciimo 10y ago
Yeah, this isn't the Cracked I grew up with. The only journalism of theirs I'm familiar with featured Nanny Dickering (http://cracked.wikia.com/wiki/Nanny_Dickering http://cracked.wikia.com/wiki/Nanny_Dickering).

dawnerd 10y ago

You're expecting a lot from cracked which until recently was owned by Demand Media. Having worked there, I wouldn't trust a single thing they put out. Edit: I don't mean to say it's not possible this happened, just you should take their reporting with a grain of salt.