With the recent cyberattacks that have occurred in Baltimore and other American cities, those who call themselves privacy advocates need to exclaim the following statement:

I told you so.

Over three weeks ago, Baltimore got struck with a cyberattack by malicious “digital extortionists” that has left the city stuck with what is effectively the virtual destruction of state services. In turn, many have suffered through the lack of access to water billing and more.

Most people understand that this is a cyberattack on government-based services. However, what people fail to take into account is the fact that this is not an ordinary attack from a group with malicious intent. Rather than developing the tools to render such services unusable themselves, they used an exploit called ‘EternalBlue’, an exploit that was designed and controlled by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

In 2017, a significant security breach within the NSA resulted in the leaking of various tools utilized for cyberattacks and exploitation. When a government agency loses control of a classified tool, program, or exploit used for offensive purposes, many elements of society can be dangerously affected and damaged.

The Shadow Brokers, the group responsible for the leaks, expressed their disdain for both President Trump, as well as Russian intelligence. Some accused the Russian authorities of being behind the leak, but this claim mostly fell apart due to the lack of logic behind such a potential development.

Fast forward to 2019, and the attacks in Baltimore are a crucial indicator of the problems surrounding a lack of safeguards on top-secret and classified programs managed by various agencies.

“I told you so.”

Privacy advocates have for the longest time warned against the potential issues with not safeguarding collected data and information, more so than most organizations.

Before the Snowden Revelations of 2013, most supporters of radical digital privacy were seen as conspiracy theorists or rather infantile in their mindsets. However, after the leaks in 2013, the same ‘conspiracy theorists’ ended up gaining a lot of traction around the world in an attempt to highlight the substantial violations of data and individual privacy, both domestically and abroad.

Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

Those same activists continued to warn against the potentiality of leaked information and the lack of proper safeguarding, although achieving little success. In the present year, the virtual destruction of entire cities has emerged. The necessity for safeguards is consistently being bolstered through these developments, and nothing is being done to help prevent such attacks on agencies and communities around the United States and internationally as well.

Privacy advocates are now in the position in which they can safely say “I told you so” to anyone who doubts the potential issues surrounding signals intelligence (SIGINT) agencies around the world. The evidence is there. Now the question has become the following:

What can be done now?

Presently, the future looks rather bleak in the world of privacy and within the intelligence communities, primarily as a result of leaked information, tools, programs, and more surfacing around the internet. Activist groups need to begin a course of action that can directly influence the public sphere on a general and mass scale. There is much that needs to be done, and the time to start was yesterday.