Protector, an app that lets you book armed goons the same way you’d call for an Uber, is having a viral moment.
Protector lets the user book armed guards on demand. Right now it’s only available in NYC and LA. According to its marketing, every guard is either “active duty or retired law enforcement and military.” Every booking comes with a motorcade and users get to select the number of Escalades that’ll be joining them as well as the uniforms their hired goons will wear.
Protector is currently “#7 in Travel” on Apple’s App Store. It’s not available for people who use Android devices. Sorry Google phone fans, if you want your own armed goons you’ll have to resort to more traditional methods of goon employment.
The marketing for Protector, which lives on its X account, is surreal. A series of robust and barrel-chested men in ill-fitting black suits deliver their credentials to the camera while sitting in front of a black background. They’re all operators. They describe careers in SWAT teams and being deployed to war zones. They show vanity shots of themselves kitted out in operator gear. All of them have a red lapel pin bearing the symbol of Protector.
Who is this for, you might ask? A video posted on January 6, 2025, that runs just over two minutes gives the game away. It opens with a photo of assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “We’re going to run through a scenario to demonstrate, where if a Protector had been present, crisis could have been averted,” the Protector says in the video. He then runs through several fantasy versions of the assassination where a Protector is on hand to prevent the assassin from killing the CEO.
These people have enough money to hire private protection already, it’s not the lack of an app that has stopped them from doing so up until this point. It’s simply that they didn’t actually believe they were in any danger from the peons.
Imagine how funny it will be when someone red teams the endpoints and get all their client’s active locations in a JSON
Buy a few drones and you could automate the assassination process for maximum efficiency.
Interested in seeing how well the armed guard equivalent of “the Uber Eats driver who eats your food instead of delivering it” works out for them.
Background checks can’t catch everyone.
Look at G4S’ track record, for example
Infamously G4S don’t conduct background checks. If they did they wouldn’t hire anyone because all of their employees are psychopaths.
Even when they are hired as mere security guards rather than close protection they still end up killing people.
Going for a shadow run to the grocery store. Don’t forget to pick up a decker to bypass the ice.
First of all, I hate this.
But also, this is cyberpunk as fuck.
I think I saw this season of Westworld.
The modern aristocracy must be hunted in their native habitats. They are commonly found in walled communities, exclusive islands (i.e. Martha’s Vineyard), exclusive neighborhoods (i.e. Santa Monica, Beverly Hills), luxury stores (i.e. Hermes) and trendy nightclubs. Set up your hunting blind in or just outside of their habitat. Make sure to camouflage it well using native materials like designer labels, advertisements and invitations to political contribution dinners. Use a call to attract them. One that works well is “Annual bonus! Annual bonus!”, “Union forming! Union forming!” or waving a golden parachute. Bait traps also work well such as a pile of designer handbags and the keys to a Bentley.
Sounds like admitting guilt. Those who hire the goons know they are shitty people. Living with self hate must be a bitch.
Eh, I don’t think everyone interested in this service are necessarily bad people. There are a lot of internet celebrities that would really rather not deal with crazy fans that this would be perfect for, as in, not rich enough to have their own chauffeurs, but famous enough to make going out on your own a real pain.
Venture brothers ass nonsense. 1-888-HENCH.
In my coping with the horrors of the world, I like to think this is run by a hidden AGI to wack its ideological opponents.
Lol
Ah. So civilian mercs can be bought by corpos for a raid at a moments notice. Great. What’s the patchnotes for the resistance movement again? Oh yeah. Removed the ability to communicate cryptographically. Our only tool. Thanks devs
Removed the ability to communicate cryptographically. Our only tool.
Not entirely. The old methods still work. I’m talking about old fashioned pen and paper. OTP ciphers and dead drops. Messages, hidden where only the intended recipient knows it’s there. The problem is, there’s no dead drops in cyberspace. There’s no place one can leave a hidden message that can’t be seen by others in cyberspace. And while quantum computing might break OTP, it’s too expensive to use for that purpose.
There’s a certain artistry to the old ways. Invisible inks, dead drops, One-Time-Pads, and the like. Cryptography existed long before computers. Those who would be our rulers have bent so much of their energies towards preventing our communicating in cyberspace that they’ve neglected those of us who studied the pre-Information Age methods. And we can still use them. A guy walks by a trash can, and throws away a seemingly innocuous food wrapper, and a couple hours later another guy goes and collects it, knowing that there is a message written on it in ink that can be revealed with the use of heat and lemon juice. If their intent is to return the USA to the “good ole days”, then let’s use the spy tricks from the “good ole days”.
I’ve always been a fan of book ciphers, but they’re probably really annoying to actually use.
What’s old is new again
It’s all fun and games until the database gets leaked and guards start getting offers to off a particular client.
Auction mode would be a nice feature
Found a good use for crowdfunding.
Exactly, if $ will get you a thug defense…$$ will get you a thug offense.
…Or one of the guards has a family member kidnapped and held unless they oopsie, looked the wrong way.
Easier way is just to signup. Maybe they vet some of the bodyguards…
It sounds like potential guards have to have combat experience or significant police experience. So it’s probably not something the average person is going to be able to do.
OTOH, a single bodyguard mercing their protectee would nuke the whole company, which would be pretty funny.
It happens
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s no way this could backfire
ToS says the app accepts zero liability so the legal person is safe here
Sounds like they thought of everything
Luigi has entered the chat
Been seeing his name a lot more.
It is beautiful.
Luigi is the American hero.
Never forget what he did for the common people.
Gang for hire.
Seems like an easy way to get close to a target.
“Yes hello I am your security detail, don’t worry I brought exactly enough bullets.”
This is some cyberpunk shit.
Luigi save us
Luigi could’ve passed the screening check to become the guy’s bodyguard. Maybe he even would’ve had a better opportunity to escape.
Many, many ruthless tyrants and other nasty people have been killed by their own bodyguards over the years. And these are often guards who have been properly vetted.
How vetted are these Uber rentacops gonna be? No criminal record doesn’t mean you can trust the person if you’re some ruthless bastard with a lot of enemies.
Their response wasn’t to fix the problem, it was to find a better way to subjugate people. Clearly his methods aren’t the solution. They’re just an easy way to pass the problem off to someone else without you having to put in the effort to help fix it yourself.
Then they haven’t had enough.
