Transcript for 8/20/24: CYBER MERCENARIES W/ MATT MALONE

When people think of private military contractors, they imagine Blackwater Security Consulting in Iraq or private soldiers that have been trained to commit an act of espionage-- there have been many movies and books that focus on mercenaries and how they can do their handiwork and then vanish into the shadows undetected.

Firms like Blackwater are quaint compared to the Wagner Group and other contemporary mercenaries. Curiously, this trend of mercenary work is overlooked by the mainstream media, and the Intelligence Community has weaponized these operatives to hunt down political adversaries --and have often been associated with Deep State activities, like mass shootings and assassinations.

But now they are advanced in other skills-- namely intelligence, code-breaking, and data mining. Some are well skilled in hacking and attacking corporate and government computer systems and there seems to be a good crop of cyber mercenaries that have been busy bringing down institutions and rendering governments paralyzed. 

Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

Cyber Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces or even geeks with a vengeance-- this invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. 

Private force has become big business, and global in scope. No one truly knows how many billions of dollars slosh around this illicit market. All we know is that business is booming. 

But at the expense of all of us.

The personal records of 2.9 billion people were stolen from a major data broker known as National Public Data earlier this year, and this month almost all of the information that was stolen was posted online for anyone to freely take. We are talking about names, addresses, phone numbers, employment histories, birth dates, and Social Security numbers. This is one of the most egregious privacy violations in the history of the world, but hardly anyone knows what has happened. 

The Los Angeles Times reported that an enormous amount of Social Security numbers and other sensitive information for millions of people could be in the hands of a hacking group after a data breach and may have been released on an online marketplace.

The hacking group USDoD claimed it had allegedly stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, reported by Bloomberg Law. The breach was believed to have happened in or around April 2024, according to the lawsuit.

The company that this data was stolen from is a Florida-based background check company known as National Public Data. 

Their primary service is collecting information from public data sources, including criminal records, addresses, and employment history, and offering that information for sale.

Of course, there are hordes of other data brokers out there these days. They collect vast troves of information on as many people as they possibly can, and then they monetize that information in various ways.

Equifax, Epsilon, and Acxiom are the three largest data brokers in existence today. Each one of them brings in more than 2 billion dollars of revenue annually.

As you can see, collecting and selling our personal information is very big business. And when one of these data brokers gets hacked, it is a major disaster for all of us.

One member of the hacking group that stole this data claims to have “the full NPD database.”

How much damage could criminals do to your life if they had your name, address,, phone number, employment history, date of birth, and Social Security number?

You might want to think about that.

If this is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than prior breaches or hacks.

An entire dossier on your life is just sitting out there, and virtually anyone who has a vendetta against you can access it.

In the weeks and months ahead, keeping a close eye on your credit report will be important. If your identity is being used by someone, you don’t want that to go unchecked for very long or else your credit could be ruined.

But ultimately there is not much that you can do to keep nefarious individuals from accessing personal information that is being freely copied and passed around the Internet.

To a very large degree, the damage has already been done.

Just like everywhere else in our society, there are vast hordes of predators on the Internet who are relentlessly searching for new victims, and this is yet another sign that our society is in an extremely advanced stage of decay.

Many times I have been told by people that the internet does not affect them because they live off the grid and so they cannot be harmed.

Well, cyber mercenaries are trained and given the challenge to find you if necessary-- it is hard to hide from Big Brother --and if bad actors hire these cyber mercenaries we can see this as a major threat to privacy and to the whole infrastructure.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties. Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers and their hired guns.

Although mercenaries are often originally experienced military soldiers, their main objective is to meet the mission given by the client who has contracted them. In other words, they are less likely than members of national armies to be asked to consider the implications of their behavior – be it on local communities, human rights, or on their state of origin – and instead, are led by the need to satisfy a client in exchange for financial reward.

Generally, mercenaries provide support for military operations – most often in the form of defensive security, training for national forces, and technical support. The UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries has identified cyber mercenaries as one category of actors that can generate mercenary-related activities. This entails a wide range of military and security services provided in cyberspace, including data collection and espionage.

American and British cybersecurity reports have now included Cyber mercenaries as a possible threat.

The report described the mercenaries as skilled cyber professionals undertaking attacks on diverse targets such as financial institutions and energy companies. When state actors employ cyberweapons, there is at least the prospect of regulation and accountability, but when private companies are involved, things get more complicated.

The cyber domain is increasingly becoming a battleground among nation-states. We have also been told that if any country were to enlist the help of cyber mercenaries to bring down our internet grid it would considered an act of war.

Cyberwarfare has indeed been recognized as a method of warfare that can infiltrate, disrupt, damage, or even destroy military or civilian objects, and cause serious human harm. Thus, it must comply with international humanitarian law. Even though a large part of the operations described as cyberattacks take place outside the framework of armed conflict.

With 300 private companies covering areas ranging from banking security to critical infrastructure defense, Israel is a world leader in the field of private cyber technology. Some of these companies exploit and profit from the fine line between defensive and offensive cyber capabilities to provide their clients with services that do not fall within the legal framework.

As an example, the privately-held Israeli company – NSO Group, which makes hacking software it sells to foreign governments and law enforcement authorities to track down terrorists and criminals, has since 2019 faced several allegations that its customers used its software to target 1,400 WhatsApp users – journalists, government officials, and human rights advocates.

In cybersecurity, identifying the individual, group of individuals, or state behind a cyber-attack is generally the most difficult part. This technical or skill-based inability to identify an adversary makes it impossible to apprehend and prosecute a cyber-attacker. Indeed, that lack of attribution then makes it harder for governments to respond, and the lack of a threat of reprisal makes deterrence difficult, if not impossible.

Additionally, while the private sector may be able to pay its people more, drawing talent, and technological prowess, away from public service, the government still holds one trump card: the law. Indeed, governments may follow treaties, protocols, and norms to maintain positive international relations, but the private sector executes its missions with little regard for legal standards. After all, privateers are driven by ideologies or financial gain. They do not care about the effect of their actions on international relations and do not consider laws.

From a legal perspective, the fact that cyber-related activities can escape regulatory control, and accountability mechanisms, and move across borders is a serious concern. Not only is it rarely possible to attribute responsibility to a cyber attacker and their agent/client, but the potential for human rights violations is even greater. Moreover, the development of offensive cyber capabilities requires appropriate policy and regulatory responses by states to ensure that they are consistent with international human rights standards and principles of international humanitarian law.

At the moment the Internet of Things can be seen as the wild west as the hired guns are constantly working to bring down systems --and create a crippling blow to a country or corporate entity that they target.

Their handiwork can also be used for false flag manipulations that harden the resolve of cycler security and the crackdown of dissent online --an excuse to squelch free speech.

A new report claims that the US security services are considering contracting the services of so-called “researchers” as a legal workaround for spying on average Americans.

These so-called independent contractors (Mercenaries) would be charged with infiltrating the social media circles of white supremacists, far-right political extremists, and other supposedly terrorist-inclined domestic forces within the country.

The report claims that the intent is to “help provide a broad picture of who was perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern”, after which “the FBI could theoretically use that pool of information to focus on specific individuals if there is enough evidence of a potential crime to legally do so”.

In other words, the US security services essentially want to establish a “Cyber Stasi” of “fellow” citizens who spy on one another and produce purported “evidence” of “potential crimes” for “justifying” the FBI’s “legal” investigations.

CNN even quoted an unnamed senior intelligence official who asked, “What do you do about an ideology that’s leading to violence? Do you have to wait until it leads to violence?”, thereby hinting that this initiative might likely be exploited to stop so-called “pre-crime”, or crimes before they occur.

Put another way, even those average Americans who practice their constitutional right to the freedom of speech to peacefully dissent against the left-wing government's consolidation of their de facto one-party rule of the country might find themselves targeted by the security services depending on how the contracted “researchers” spin their words.

The BBC reports that a 40-year-old man has been arrested and criminally charged for social media posts that contained “anti-establishment rhetoric.”

Wayne O’Rourke becomes the latest example of the wave of authoritarian hysteria to impact free speech in the UK following the recent anti-mass migration riots.

O’Rourke was arrested on Sunday in connection with “posts made from a social media account,”

Nottingham Magistrates’ Court heard the posts were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric,” reports the BBC.

O’Rourke had nearly 100,000 followers on X and predicted his own arrest days beforehand.

The report does not give any specifics of what the thought criminal actually posted, but he had “allegedly expressed support for the recent riots and offered advice on how to remain anonymous to his 98,000 followers.

Freedom of speech be damned.

A 61-year-old man in the UK was jailed for 18 months for chanting “Who the fuck is Allah” and telling police officers “you’re not English anymore” during a protest outside Downing Street.

Another man was imprisoned for 2 months merely for posting the words “coming to a town near you” alongside images of Muslim men on Facebook.

The legacy media continues to offer rolling, around-the-clock coverage of the charges being handed out to people who posted offensive content online, seemingly to act as a warning to others.

Children as young as 12 years old have also been charged in connection with the riots, as authorities warn that merely observing a riot taking place and not even taking part in it is enough to bring criminal charges against someone.

The controllers of the internet and the mercenaries they have hired are now doing the work they have been charged with --and this is a dreadful miscarriage of justice.

None of these cyber Stasi answer to an elected group of senators or congressmen -- they are hired to target individuals and harass them with threats and DDoS attacks -- among other things.

This is how it starts.

Martin Niemöller's warning about the widening net that ensnares us all still applies:

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."

Here in the U.S., it started with the censors who went after extremists spouting so-called "hate speech," and few spoke out — because they were not extremists and didn't want to be shamed for being perceived as politically incorrect.

They went after anyone who spoke out about COVID-19, the vaccines, and Hunter Biden.

By the time the techno-censors went after extremists spouting "misinformation" about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists. Still, few spoke out.

Eventually, "we the people" will be the ones in the crosshairs. At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes "extremism, "we the people" might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.

Whatever we tolerate now — whatever we turn a blind eye to — whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.