Secret Service Agents block telecom threat in New York

While close to 150 world leaders prepared to descend on Manhattan for the UN general assembly, the US Secret Service was quietly dismantling a massive hidden telecom network across the New York area - a system investigators say could have crippled mobile phone masts, jammed 911 calls and flooded networks with chaos at the very moment the city was most vulnerable.

- Associated Press

The cache, made up of more than 300 sim servers packed with more than 100,000 sim cards and clustered within 35 miles (56km) of the United Nations, represents one of the most sweeping communications threats uncovered on US soil. Investigators say the system could have blacked out mobile phone service in a city that relies on it not only for daily life but for emergency response and counter-terrorism.

As foreign leaders filled midtown hotels and motorcades clogged Manhattan, officials yesterday said the takedown highlights a new frontier of risk: plots aimed at the invisible infrastructure that keeps a modern city connected.