Your content always make me feel a little\u00a0better.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m here to make anyone feel better, but I definitely am here to call out terrible people and try to be a credible person. Everyone is so political, and so toxic. I am trying to not be divisive. I\u2019m trying to teach people how to have media literacy. Nobody knows how to use the internet, apparently, or do any research on anything, or they just don\u2019t care to. So, yeah, I\u2019m fighting a lot of battles\u00a0here.\u201d<\/p>\n With his stern speak, blue eyes and dark blond hair combed back he reminds me a bit of a benevolent Homelander.<\/p>\n \u201cI was always interested in finding ways to connect and gain access to different communities. And I think the best way to do that is through language, because language is the gateway to their\u00a0soul\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How did you get into intelligence?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I joined the Air Force, I was accepted into a program to learn languages. I learned Hebrew, and my job was to\u200a\u2014\u200ain some sense\u200a\u2014\u200abe a bridge between Israel and the United States. I spent a few years at the National Security Agency (NSA), where I got into cyber and signals intelligence, and I even deployed to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n After I got out of the military, I went into marketing and media. That\u2019s where I noticed there is a lot of crossover between communications, behavior, psychology, and technology\u200a\u2014\u200aa lot of shared skills you can use between intelligence and marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n But what made you enlist in the first\u00a0place?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cTwo things, one good reason, one bad reason. Well, not that <\/em>bad,\u201d he reflects.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, I\u2019ve always wanted to be a police officer since I was a kid. Eventually I became interested in joining the military. I wasn\u2019t really obsessed with it like some people are, but I always like had it in the back of my\u00a0mind.<\/p>\n I grew up speaking languages. Learning languages for fun. Persian, Assyrian. I was fluent in Spanish at one point. I just love languages. I grew up around a lot of different cultures, and sometimes I was the only white guy, so I just was always interested in finding ways to connect and gain access to different communities. And I think the best way to do that is through language, because language is the gateway to their soul, their traditions, their holidays, their history, their culture. When I was young, I wasn\u2019t thinking about it that way, but in retrospect, I can see\u00a0it.<\/p>\n And the second reason is I was just wasting my time. I was hanging out with people just doing stupid stuff, until I was twenty years old, partying. I went to community college, but the only classes I would attend were my language classes, like Arabic and Farsi. I was a terrible student. I\u2019m a smart person, but a terrible student because I\u2019m so easily distracted.<\/p>\n At some point I found out that you can learn a language in the military. I just had this epiphany: I gotta do something with my life. So I killed two birds with one\u00a0stone.\u201d<\/p>\n Please tell me more about your upbringing.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMy mom\u2019s Jewish, my dad\u2019s not. My mom was adopted, so she was raised mostly with Catholic people, so I didn\u2019t really have this Jewish upbringing that some people have here in America. But I decided to do Birthright, which is why I tell people that, funny enough, the first Jewish thing I ever did was Birthright.\u201d<\/p>\n (Note: Birthright is a nonprofit organization that provides free educational trips to Israel for young adults of Jewish heritage.)<\/p>\n Did that make you want to learn\u00a0Hebrew?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cA couple weeks into boot camp, they ask you, well, what languages do you want to learn? and you make a wish list. I had just come back from Israel, so I put Hebrew first. Number two, I put Persian Farsi because I had already learned how to read and write it, and I grew up with mostly Iranians. Number three, I put Serbo-Croatian because I was starting to learn how to read Russian. Long story short, I got\u00a0Hebrew.<\/p>\n When you join the military, you have to pass a linguistic test to become a translator. I went to a recruiter and said, \u2018Hey, I want to learn a language.\u2019 She said, \u2018We\u2019re going to put you in infantry.\u2019 I told her I only wanted to be a translator or I wasn\u2019t joining. She said, \u2018Haha, yeah, okay, sure\u2026 We\u2019ll get you a job.\u2019 And I told her, \u2018No, you don\u2019t understand. I\u2019m only doing translator or I\u2019m not joining.\u2019<\/p>\n She told me most people can\u2019t even pass the test, but if I could, we\u2019d discuss it. The test is basically deciphering a fake language that the military created, in about two\u00a0hours.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you decipher\u00a0it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThey want to see your natural ability to understand and identify grammar patterns, prefixes, suffixes, and things of that nature. So I passed, obviously. And the recruiter said, \u2018Holy shit, you passed!\u2019 She didn\u2019t even believe I would, because only a tiny percentage does. They treat you like royalty as soon as you can pass these things, because they are very hard positions to\u00a0fill.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNihilism is a sort of a philosophic belief that nothing matters. There\u2019s these groups of people who are chronically online, who glorify violence, and want to sow chaos, exploit others and recruit others into this\u2026their metric for success is harm by any means necessary.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How do you usually describe yourself these days? A national security\u00a0analyst?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt depends who I\u2019m talking to. If I\u2019m talking to people in the law enforcement or government space, I might say I\u2019m an open-source intelligence analyst. Otherwise, I might say I do digital intelligence or digital investigations\u200a\u2014\u200akind of like a private investigator, but I just focus on the digital world, social media, and the internet. When I go on the news, I\u2019ll say national security analyst because I am broader in that sense; I might talk about what\u2019s happening in Gaza, Iran, or extremism groups in the\u00a0US.\u201d<\/p>\n What would be your dream case? Something you\u2019d be really invested\u00a0in?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere was one investigation that was in some ways my favorite, but is also horrific. There\u2019s these groups called Nihilistic Violent Extremists (NVEs). It is now a category within the FBI <\/a>as\u00a0well.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point in the conversation, he shows me his findings, trying his best not to zoom into any graphic images. Still, I had a pretty bad nightmare that\u00a0night.<\/p>\n \u201cNihilism is a sort of a philosophic belief that nothing matters. So there\u2019s these groups of people who are chronically online, who glorify violence, and want to sow chaos, exploit others and recruit others into this. If I were to use a marketing expression, their metric for success is harm by any means necessary.<\/p>\n What they tend to do is go into games like Roblox. They recruit children\u200a\u2014\u200asometimes eight or nine years old, sometimes younger. They become friends and start to groom them. They get them to send naked pictures or something like that, and use that as blackmail.<\/p>\n They instruct these kids to cut themselves, or brand themselves. \u2018Okay, now I own you because I branded you. Now I want you to harm your pet. If you don\u2019t, I will release your pictures to your family and school. Now you have to commit suicide and live stream it for us so my friends can watch\u2019. It\u2019s the most horrific stuff I\u2019ve ever seen in my entire\u00a0life.<\/p>\n So I go through their websites and try to get into the infrastructure. Who\u2019s behind it? Which countries is it in? What\u2019s the flow from Roblox to Discord, from Discord to the website, to TikTok? I try to find out where they are, get into their forums to map their leadership, capture IP addresses, and attribute their location. Then I gave my findings to the\u00a0FBI.<\/p>\n This case changed my life. It shook me forever. This group does all the crimes\u200a\u2014\u200amurder, suicide, arson, animal abuse, doxing, revenge porn. I know there\u2019s the mafia, terrorists, and murderers, but to realize there\u2019s a group that will do any of them just for the sake of it<\/em> is what changed my life. Oh, they\u2019re also super racist to Jews and Black\u00a0people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about hope for me. When you work in these realms, it\u2019s about mitigation. How can we just minimize the suffering?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You\u2019re one man going after all these haters and criminals. How do you process\u00a0that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe stakes are so high here. Even if we could only help a couple of kids, you can change someone\u2019s life. When I\u2019m outing some Jew-hater or something like that, yeah, it\u2019s important, but I am under no delusion that it\u2019s more than a drop in the bucket. In the grand scale of things, it\u2019s meaningless compared to going after child predators.<\/p>\n But this is so dark and heavy. A case I did for a couple of weeks could really mess you up. If you see this stuff all day, every day, it\u2019ll ruin\u00a0you.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you deal with that? How do you deal with being chronically online and just seeing the worst in people all the\u00a0time?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not much you can do. You try to go to the gym, hang out with friends. You just have to escape it in healthy\u00a0ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you still have hope in humanity?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about hope for me. When you work in these realms, it\u2019s about mitigation. How can we just minimize the suffering? I\u2019m not saying I\u2019m not hopeful, but hope isn\u2019t really something that I think\u00a0about.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s the next\u00a0step?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about what kinds of technology we can use to scale what we\u2019re doing. We need a hundred of me to truly have a measurable impact. Everyone in law enforcement is at their limit. There\u2019s just so much crime and and just evil fucking people, especially on the internet. I can\u2019t create more time, so we need to automate certain pieces so OSINT analysts can do more. One of the cons of AI is it\u2019s going to take some jobs, which sucks. But if I can save more people, I can sleep at\u00a0night.\u201d<\/p>\n When you go after <\/strong>these haters\u200a<\/strong><\/a>\u2014\u200afor example, this guy who commented \u201cHitler knew what needed to be done\u201d on a photo of Miss Israel\u2014 despite it being a drop in the ocean, is there a message you\u2019re trying to get\u00a0across?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen you put somebody on the spot, it\u2019s essentially, \u2018fuck around and find out.\u2019 You have your freedom of speech to be hateful, but I have my freedom to absolutely drag you publicly. You\u2019re so confident in your hatred? I will raise the bar. I\u2019ll give you the attention you\u00a0want.<\/p>\n They may not be breaking the law, but they need to be held accountable in the court of public opinion. Those things you said? Stand by them, because now they\u2019ll be on the first page of Google for the foreseeable future when anyone looks you\u00a0up.\u201d<\/p>\n I usually wrap up by asking people if there\u2019s a movie or a book that inspires them. Is there a book or TV show that makes you say, that\u2019s my\u00a0life?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHave you ever seen Homeland<\/em>? I love it. What I like is the complexity of the moral and human elements of intelligence. Carrie Mathison has mental health issues, and sometimes they help her be a better analyst, and sometimes they wreck\u00a0her.<\/p>\n Another one I like\u200a\u2014\u200aa little bit darker\u200a\u2014\u200ais Dexter<\/em>. Obviously, I don\u2019t agree with taking the law into your own hands and killing people, but I like the premise of holding people accountable when they get away with horrible stuff. I\u2019ve never killed a person like that, but in some ways, I feel like hacker-type people can be digital Dexters. You think you can skirt away, hide in the shadows, and lie without getting caught? Then a digital Dexter steps in and holds you accountable in some other\u00a0way.\u201d<\/p>\n The Digital Dexter: He Learned Hebrew in the U.S Air Force. Now He Hunts Child Predators Online.<\/a> was originally published in OSINT Team<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Travis Hawley woke up sick today. \u201cA little bit of shortness of breath,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe I just slept wrong or something.\u201d He does not yet know that in a few hours, he will be checked into a hospital for blood clots in both lungs\u200a\u2014\u200aa potentially lethal condition he is still recovering from as I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantusintel.group\/osint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/627\/1*FEWwcNPngnESoxwtNb8MFA.png\")
Part I: Origin Story <\/strong>(The Epiphany)<\/h3>\n
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Part II: Fighting\u00a0Nihilism<\/h3>\n
CONTENT WARNING. The next part contains descriptions of child and animal exploitation.<\/h4>\n
Part III: Drop in the\u00a0Ocean<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1000\/1*nUVAdOMbnUVjY6AoBc_XcQ.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
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