This is the story of the hacker known as "USDoD". When he was young he had a vengeance on the US, and this lead him down a road of continual data breaches, until he hacked into National Public Data, which is when his spree went one step too far.

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Sources

Full list of sources on the show page: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/177/

One day Nick got a visit from the FBI demanding he give them data on one of his customers. They asked for it in the form of a National Security Letter or NSL. Something wasn’t right about this letter. It seemed to violate the constitution. So he set out to change the law.

Learn more about Nicks work at calyxinstitute.org and phreeli.com.

Check out Cindy’s book Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (https://amzn.to/4gXuK2J).

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Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker®. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.

Support for this episode comes from NetSuite. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet to learn more.

This show is sponsored by Maze. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet for more information.

View all active sponsors.

Sources

• https://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/11/gagged_for_6_years_nick_merrill
• https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/u-s-nicholas-merrill-v-loretta-e-lynch-14-cv-9763-vm/
• https://clearinghouse.net/case/12966/
• https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/dec/06/fbi-national-security-letter-gag-order-nick-merrill
• https://www.aclu.org/documents/national-security-letters
• https://www.eff.org/cases/re-matter-2011-national-security-letter
• Cindy’s Book: Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance