On Sep 24, 2025, at 9:56 AM, Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Upon actually reading the article, this looks overblown, typical of the current regime.
Having a lot of SIM cards, a lot of phones, having phones in a rack-mount form factor, and plugging SIM cards into things that are not phones are not illegal.
The fact that a cellphone network could be overloaded by a lot of phones doesn't make it illegal to have a lot of phones. Even if it /does/ overload the cellphone network, AFAIK it's still not illegal unless that was your intention.
Yes, it's very overblown.
The reports say these items were found inside of a "35 mile radius" of the UN. The total population inside that area is roughly 17 million people.
100k SIMs is a rounding error relative to the number of cellular network devices in that area.
Perhaps of interest: https://cybersect.substack.com/p/that-secret-service-sim-farm-story Regards, -drc