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For reference, ~18 million people live within 35 miles of Manhattan.

"In addition to jamming the cellular network, he said, such a large amount of equipment near the United Nations could be used for eavesdropping."

How could a SIM farm be used for eavesdropping?

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How could lots of cellular radios be used to capture data that's in the air?

Yes, this is what I want to know. I didn't think a cell phone (or any number of cell phones) could intercept other phone calls/data. I know a fake cell tower has some capability for that.

Crash the tower (instead of jamming it) and then put up your own fake tower?

It's wireless comms, can't anyone with a radio tune in? The problem is capturing all channels which can be accomplished with lots of radios

How are cell signals different from any other radio comms?

The problem is that it's all encrypted.

Yes I know. I assume a state actor could still use it if not decrypt it.

It can’t, its a lie.

Explain why it can't please.

It's the wrong hardware for the job. The hardware for eavesdropping masquerades as a tower, not as 64 cell phones. A big sim bank like this is useless for that purpose.

You don't need to masquerade to eavesdrop. In fact masquerading would likely get you caught

Because of encryption, you can only eavesdrop traffic between a phone and a tower if you are the phone or you are the tower.

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