TRO LLC: Hacktivist Hedge Fund Seeks Crowdfunding

There aren’t many ways to hold large tech companies accountable for leaving your personal data unprotected or, worse, selling your data to third parties including the government. If the government is complicit in violating your privacy, who then will hold these players accountable?

Andrew Auernheimer, also known as ‘Weev‘ in hacker circles, was caged in federal prison for revealing a massive privacy flaw in AT&T’s public server. He recently invoiced the U.S. government, payable in bitcoin, for having his life violently and fraudulently stolen from him for three years. This letter was mostly symbolic and unlikely to produce reparations for Auernheimer.

So he seeks a more productive way to fight back, a way that privacy activists can financially benefit while holding large corporations accountable for their failures and/or tyrannical collusion with the government.

Auernheimer is seeking crowdfunding for this venture, TRO LLC, a hedge fund that will sell short publicly-traded stocks of corporations that his hacker analysts reveal to be compromised.

Here’s Weev on CNBC discussing the concept:

Auerenheimer writes this on his StartJOIN funding page: “I feel when a big company puts you at risk, you deserve to know about it so you can mitigate the risk you’re exposed to. . . I have fought hard to inform you of bad actors in software and web services and want to continue doing so. Help me start TRO LLC and you’ll be paid dividends in lulz for all eternity.”

Auerenheimer recently appeared on the Keiser Report: