Spy Vs. (Counter)Spy

GAFAM is following you. It’s tracking your every move. It wants to get inside your brain.

But have no fear. Secret agent Sean O’Brien is on the case.

O’Brien isn’t technically a secret agent. Or even literally a spy.

But he tracks the corporate big-tech spies — like Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft (aka GAFAM) — that have come under increasing scrutiny for monitoring our every movement (even our dogs’ movements!) and thought and Internet click.

In his day job as a Yale Law School researcher and Privacy Lab founder, O’Brien, a 35-year-old local native who lives in Morris Cove, works with colleagues to hunt down and combat cyberattacks, password-cracking, and other tech threats to our privacy.

Now he has launched a company to carry out that mission by giving people an alternative iCloud or Dropbox when they share files or store data — in a way that keeps their information in their own hands rather than the hands of cyberpredators.

O’Brien runs the company, called PrivacySafe, with six part-timers from a desk in the basement of MakeHaven on Chapel Street. He launched the company with $15,000 he made buying Bitcoin low and selling high. He doesn’t get big venture capital for a simple reason: His business model runs counter to the premise behind most tech start-up investments, which calls for harvesting personal data to exploit or sell. O’Brien’s company seeks to do the opposite: ​“We’re going to make sure we can’t even look at your behavior. We don’t want to look at that stuff,” he said.

PrivacySafe is about to bring to market its first product: this pictured data-storing gizmo that — get this — you can hold in your hand. O’Brien is holding it in his hand in the photo at the top of this story. Its various versions sell for between $199 and $599. (You can pre-order and learn more here.)

“People need to be willing to say: I need my data in my house, not in the cloud. We need to get savvy and more empowered in how we use and store and share data,” O’Brien said.

His product is aimed at small businesses where workers regularly interact with in-house colleagues or outside contractors and freelancers. It allows them to store all their data — electronic files, photos, collaborative interactions, health care information — on a physical device rather than through an app or in the cloud. Even O’Brien’s company can’t track that data. ​“We scramble it before we send it over the pipe,” he said.

Users still need to maintain best security practices on their other devices (phone, computer) used in the process to protect this information. PrivacySafe works with users to do that, and to protect passwords and avoid viruses.

O’Brien acknowledges that hackers might still find their way into these networks. The point is to greatly reduce that prospect, and to prevent Apple or Google or other tech companies that operate networks from spying on customers and exploiting their data. O’Brien’s company is just getting started; the idea is to keep developing and improving products in the quest to combat the assault on personal privacy.

O’Brien sees his work as part of a broader quest: to help people become savvier and more empowered about what happens to their data.

“We really need a paradigm shift in the way that people think about hardware, think about software. We need people to be willing say, ​‘OK, I’m going to take my data and have it my house so I can put my hands on it. OK, I’m going to make sure it’s encrypted here. I’m responsible for it. I’m empowered through that responsibility,” he said.

Part of that involves reexamining our emerging full participation in ​“the cloud” linking all our devices to storage, servers, and apps.

“The world is getting nastier and nastier. We have crises coming,” O’Brien noted, from personal cyberstalking and bullying and ransomware attacks to corporate espionage and cyberwarfare.

O’Brien discussed those threats — and the evolution of ​“Internet of Things” — as well as his new company during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. Click on the video below to watch the episode.