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.
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.