'Uber for Armed Guards' Rushes to Market Following the Assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO
gizmodo.com
Are you scared to walk down the streets of NYC and also have too much money? There's an app for that.

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.

    • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 个月前

      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.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 个月前

      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.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    0·
    4 个月前

    For what they’re charging, you’re not going to get elite private security, you’re going to get mall cops on their day off.

    This is not for the actual rich, it’s for tiktok influencers to show off.

    • Donjuanme@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 个月前

      That was my thought, nobody in their right mind (least of all paranoid rich people) would use a third party service that requires them to announce they’re someone of value.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          4 个月前

          Or the delusional. Anyone with a serious security concern has mitigation plans in place. This is for people who think they need security because reasons, mainly to satiate their ego.

          I remember right after the UHC assassination I was in getting a haircut, and there was another guy getting cut that was loudly spouting off about how he was afraid for his life because he’s a CEO. Like dude, you’re a CEO of a small local financial services firm, not the CEO of a massive conglomerate. I’m technically the CEO of my small contracting company that’s incorporated. We are not targets (unless you’re a massive prick, which by the way he was talking was quite possible), but if one of us got popped it wouldn’t make the news, nor are we likely to be targeted, calm down lol.

  • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 个月前

    Are you worried people with guns might try to take your money? Why take chances? You should hire these people with guns who will for sure take your money.

  • oakey66@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 个月前

    What a dystopian nightmare we live in right now. Remember when politicians told us we have choices in our healthcare? I guess it says something that insurance CEOs are so hated that they need armed body guards and we’re so happy about “all our choices”.

    • Agent641@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 个月前

      “Yes hello I am your security detail, don’t worry I brought exactly enough bullets.”

  • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
    0·
    4 个月前

    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

    • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 个月前

      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.