Why Russian phone numbers mean Russia backdoors? Wasn't a fake clue like zombie computer? Even Hollywood hacker movies from the ’80s knew that if he were really Russian, he’d at least use a German phone number.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
563 points (99.8% liked)
World News
57720 readers
1707 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Ask Historians !askhistorians@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
in slovakia, you can't drive to the store because the traffic lights have been hacked.
in russia, you can't drive to the store because there's no gas and the warehouse is a smoking hole in the ground.
Everything that can have a back door has a back door. No exceptions.
(whether Russian cameras or USA F-35 fighters)
May I introduce, the man without a butthole!
Ecce homo!
and this is why the average multi-millionaire needs to make their own silicon chips
The current government of the country, led by populist Robert Fico, initially denied reports that the cameras were of Russian origin and rebuffed any security concerns.
We know that russia is trying to disrupt military logistics going from western countries into Ukraine. We saw attacks at train lines. We saw the recent drone attack at ukrainian military cargo planes in Leipzig. We know that russia is using agents to install secret webcams on roads to monitor military traffic. We know that germany switched off its public autobahn webcams because of this. Russia using backdoors in traffic cams is totally something they would do and Fico is lying here
Fico is lying, fork found in kitchen
Does make you wonder about all those Flock Cameras going up in the US and Europe.
I wonder how the public would respond if they believed the cameras were accessible by the nefarious Russians or the insidious Chinese?
by the nefarious Russians or the insidious Chinese?
why would US Citizens cate ? it's the US Government that wants to harm them.
Or the fascist US, which they very likely are.
That’s not a backdoor though, that’s their stated purpose
What's the difference?
Benn Jordan exposed their utter cybersecurity failure. His videos are in great part responsible for why the deflock movement took off.
They are accessible by the Russians. They’re accessible from Joe Smoe, as evidenced by Benn Jordan. The cameras don’t discriminate in their discrimination and securities.
I remember seeing articles that there are/were security vulnerabilities that went unpatched.
Since the american government is already abusing them, there's less of a conversation about how foreign governments might abuse them
I as well wonder. I also wonder why we don't start a rumour that that is the case.
It's not unethical, because we should all know the US did make sure there are back doors they can spy through. It's true, even if we don't know how it's true. Same with the kill switches in high value military gear they sell, like fighter jets and bombers.
The public has been generally brainwashed into believing the Russians aren't a threat, or are even a savior of right wing anti-gay gun-toting wife-beating conservatism.
But considering Trump is working with Russia, and Russia is working with China, it's probably not that far out of reality.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Ye… Russian and Chinese infiltration are exactly the reason why leftists and centrist blocs in the EU introduced things like the GDPR snd Cybersecurity laws.
And why right wing extremists are constantly subverting efforts for more control and regulation.
Interesting how that goes, innit? Nazis and fascists happily supporting Russian & Chinese campaigns to destabilize Europe.
Reminds me of Flock in the US. They claim to have no access to outside users when requested, and yet in Denver they kept them up and running and only took them down when bagged so the data would be useless to other users. I feel like at some point we're going to find the justice department or something like Palantir had unlimited access to the whole network the entire time.
There are now plenty of flock cameras taken down. I wonder if someone is being able to extract the firmware from one of those and start to reverse engineering it to see what's doing and what can do.
Many adjacent videos to what you're proposing. This guy is a legend. https://youtube.com/@bennjordan
I believe this is the reason for some of the data center buildout, not AI but massive amounts of storage to store data long term. AI might layer be used to edit data to manufacture evidence.
That's why I wear my tinfoil hat down low to obscure my face.
Well hard drives are brutally expensive now too, but I think Nvidia wouldn't be the richest company in the history of the world if the expansion wasn't all based on compute.
palantir, MS, google certaintly does already. palantir likely has first access.
They both certainly do, that’s not even a question in my mind. There’s no other reason you build a “disruptive” surveillance camera system and guerrilla-install them even in places that had no contract, other than to give eyes to the intelligence industrial nightmare that is addicted to total control of all humans everywhere
As if they’d bother to bring peace if they ever accomplished this
Maybe it would be a good idea to spread the rumor that the Russian and china were using flock cameras to help Iran plan a terror attack. But that would be so wrong….
We really should start some rumours, idk if that's the one I would go with, but yeah, something(s) like that. I said the same further up the page actually.
learns basic propaganda techniques
forgets that right wing Americans have been convinced Russia is actually the good guy
Someone is going to Die Hard 4 someone else eventually. In fact, didn't Russia knock a bunch of Ukrainian millitary communications satellites off before they invaded?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260730-satellite-killers-what-a-war-in-space-might-look-like
view more: next ›