National Insecurity Agency

The **National Insecurity Agency**, commonly abbreviated as **NiSA** or **NIA**, was a hacker collective in the United States. active from the early 2020s through the late 2050s in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and later in Chicago. Originating as a student organization, the group evolved into a hackerspace and extracurricular activist group for students at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the early years of the groups existance, members focused on studying, exposing, and counteracting what they saw as authoritarian governmental and corporate abuses perpetuated by technological means. At some point over the ensuing decade, the praxis of the group shifted to more extremist direct action. By the start of the 2030s, the group had lost many of the less radical original members and had become far more clandestine, abandoning most of its remaining formal affiliations with the university. The group began engaging in attacks and violent sabotage, first gathering the attention of the United States federal government after the assassination of Herman Gage in 2040, committed by several group members led by Alexa Francetic.

## History

The organization traces it's origin to the Multi-Discipline Engineering Study Group at the University of Pennsylvania. The founding members were all students at the University of Pennsylvanias School of Engineering and Applied Science, and included Simone Carlstrom; the groups first president, Stuart Alpert, Si Fan, Ran Wang, and James Bresehoff, as well as an individual using the handle 'yxy'. The MDESG started as a study group and was officially registered in the fall of 2020, but by the next semester it had lost recognition from the Student Activities Council and had been forced off-campus.

Beginning in 2021, they would meet in a small warehouse space owned by Chris Circosta, introduced to the group by a friend of Carlstrom. Circosta ran a small laser cutting business out of the warehouse, and the presence Circosta was an avowed anarchist and held deep antiestablishment views, owing in part to dropping out of the University five years prior, and his involvement with the group greatly escalated their extremist activities.

#### Growth and operations outside of the University

Over the next decade, the group maintained an unofficial presence within the School of Engineering and Applied Science, affiliating with professors and alumni, and recruiting new members through word of mouth from the student body. The group would hold unofficial events for students including hackathons, LAN parties, and presentations on their findings and research. Many members recruited during this period would go on to become notable in the fields of engineering, computer science, and security research in their own right, including Amy Holstein, Willica Guest, and Khalid Hassan. During this time, they were still known as the Multi-Discipline Engineering Study Group.

Due to the group being formally unaffiliated with the University, most members would remain well past their graduation from the school, at least those who remained local after graduation. Members Jason Chan, Sigme Okte, Christina Chade, and Megan Boltmann, all of whom were natives of New York City, graduated from the University of Pennsylvenia in 2028. After they returned to New York, they kept in contact with the Philadelphia-based group, and with their encouragement formed the New York branch of the MDESG.

A similar process occurred in Boston and Chicago, with officially-recognized branches of the group taking root after a mass exodus of graduating members. It is thought to have also occurred in several other cities, though this was never verified due to the extreme lengths each branch took to hide themselves from law enforcement as well as each other. Even among the four known branches, the Chicago branch was formed from members of the Boston branch that graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and so had no direct relationship with the original Philadelphia location or members.

#### Shift to extremism

By the start of the 2030s, the activities of the group had shifted to mostly overtly illegal direct action, including property damage, vandalism, and theft. At this point, they were still recruiting members from universities near their branches, but they were no longer affiliated openly with faculty and did not have any physical presence on campuses. At the University of Pennsylvenia, the group had become legendary among the student body, and was the subject of urban legends and stories among engineering students, as well as the politically active segments of the student body. By 2031, the group was referring to itself as the National Insecurity Agency.

As the group shifted its focus to more extremist activities, less radical members began to leave the organization. Many of these members were very active in the research and reverse engineering that the group had formed around, but were unwilling to participate in more violent versions of these activities. People that left during this time included Willica Guest, and Khalid Hassan, both high-profile members that went on to have prominent careers in industry.

The shift to extremism during this period was also reflected in the members that were recruited around this time as well. Members recruited around this time included James Johnson, Fadi Haruna, and Alexa Francetic.

#### Activities of Alexa Francetic

Alexa Francetic, a University of Pennsylvania Computer Science dropout on poor terms with the University administration, had for many years been acting against several of the same societal elements that the NIA had grown to oppose, so her extreme ideas and attitudes were not out-of-place by any means when she joined sometime in the early 2030s. By 2033, she had established herself as a regular presence in the group and had made allies of key members including Circosta, Carlstrom, and Holstein. She was considered to be particularly close with Carlstrom and fellow new recruit Fadi Haruna, a Nigerian-born University of Pennsylvenia student who had completed a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science the same year that Francetic had dropped out, though in general she was known to be reclusive and untrusting of others.

During her early years with the group, Francetic introduced the practice of 'counter-surveillance', the covert destruction of NTLEC cameras and other surveillance systems, often times to enable future criminal actions. She was also notably the first to openly propose a shift to targeting specific organizations, and eventually people, according to the testimony of other members. Stuart Alpert would recall Francetic suddenly disappearing in May of 2035, returning two months later with an unusually enhanced motivation to focus on "the human element of the problem", at the time specifically naming the Ross Corporation as a target of interest.

#### FBI raid and dissolution

In connection with the 2045 Ross Tower bombing, and with a growing list of evidence regarding other illegal activities by the organization, the Philadelphia headquarters of the group was raided by the FBI on July 3, 2047. Three members of the group were killed during the raid, with fifteen others being arrested, including Stuart Alpert, Ran Wang, and Carter Bohlan. Despite this, other NIA members were able to carry out a self-destruct sequence on most of the organization's local servers, and five members who were present escaped from the site, including Alexa Francetic, Fadi Haruna, Simone Carlstrom, and Si Fan.

A subsequent police raid was conducted the following day on the New York City branch of the group, where eight members were arrested without incident. The Boston location was discovered by authorities to have been abandoned shortly after the Philadelphia raid. Authorities were never able to pinpoint the location of the Chicago branch.

A manhunt began shortly after the Philadelphia raid to apprehend key members of the organization that had not been located yet, specifically Carlstrom, Circosta, Francetic, Haruna, and Fan. Circosta was apprehended in Berlin on July 28, 2049. He volunteered himself as an informant, opening a line of communication with fellow founding member Amy Holstein, who revealed that she and several other members were hiding out in Center Area, Singapore.

A joint operation between the FBI and Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs was carried out on November 29, 2049, which resulted in the capture of four NIA members, including Fan and Holstein, the latter of whom committed suicide by cop during the confrontation, pulling a 3D-printed model of a handgun out of her jacket and pointing it at officers. Francetic and Haruna evaded capture, and were pursued by authorities until they boarded a small boat and fled into the Strait of Singapore.

They were eventually found on December 2, near the former military base on Bukom Island, and attempted again to flee by boat. While boarding their craft, Haruna was shot and killed by the Singapore authorities, and Francetic fled on her own back into the Strait. Francetic was finally cornered on Semakau Island, a landfill site for the main island, and was shot and killed by Singapore authorities on December 6.

### Aftermath

The coordinated raids on the known NIA branches, as well as the manhunt for the remaining Philadelphia members in Singapore, was an extreme blow to the group. Twenty-seven members were in custody, including most of the Philadelphia branch and the entirety of the New York City branch, and six members had been killed, including Amy Holstein, Fadi Haruna, and Alexa Francetic. The only remaining member of the Philadelphia branch unaccounted for was Simone Carlstrom, who was not with the members in Singapore, and the entirety of the Boston and Chicago branches, an estimated 15 to 25 members, were not found.

Most of the people of interest in connection to the bombing and other attacks had been killed, and so the prosecution narrowed focus onto the founding members and others most active in the criminal enterprises, namely Chris Circosta, Stuart Alpert, Si Fan, Ran Wang, and James Bresehoff. Though Circosta and Alpert had been cooperating with authorities for several months, and in Circosta's case had made significant contributions to the apprehension of other members, they received intense scrutiny as two of the more prominent extremist elements within the group. Si Fan was also a high-value target for prosecutors, being the most prominent of the surviving members that had fled the country. They were also interrogated repeatedly regarding the location of Carlstrom, but maintained that she had parted ways with them before they left the United States.

Several trials were held for the captured members. Individual trials were held for Circosta, Alpert, Bresehoff, Si Fan, and Wang, as well as four other members of the Philadelphia branch (including the two other survivors from the group apprehended in Singapore) and two members from New York. The remaining ten Philadelphia members stood trial together in a joint trial, as did six of the eight New York City members. The joint trials produced relatively light sentences, while Alpert, Si Fan, and the two others from Singapore received fifteen years imprisonment each. Circosta was given credit for his cooperation with law enforcement, and received a four year sentence.

## Activities

Much of the income for the collective came from selling stolen equipment and data, extortion, offering their own software, equipment, or hacking services for money, and mining Stone with computer equipment they stole.

One service the group offered was 'deicing' drones and RC aircraft, disabling the FAA-mandated identification transceiver circuit on commercial controller boards. The Philadelphia chapter ran a surplus store near the University of Philadelphia campus, which served as a front for illegal services such as this.

Their New York City chapter had created a custom encrypted radio-based intranet that they had installed throughout the city, selling access to it to gangs and other criminal organizations in the city.

Members of the group also engaged in 'counter-surveillance', a practice in which a member would drive a modified vehicle with a modified trunk compartment where another member would lay with a sniper rifle and shoot out traffic cameras and NTLEC cameras along a given route, often just for fun or for the purpose of clearing a surveillance-free getaway route for a later escapade.

## Notable members

Most members and associates of the group avoided using their legal names, opting instead to use monikers and online handles for any official or unofficial communication. Among the founding members of the group were Chris Circosta (Mephistopher), yxy, Stuart Alpert (corporeal), James Bresehoff (Damn), Ran Wang (ww), Si Fan, and Simone Carlstrom (Amp).

Other members and individuals associated with the group are listed below.

Philadelphia:

* Carter Bohlan (cdb)
* Alexa Francetic (ex-girlfriend)
* Willica Guest
* Fadi Haruna (Median)
* Khalid Hassan (cara)
* Amy Holstein (Eagle)
* James Johnson
* Lisa Yu

New York City:

* Megan Boltmann (Me33)
* Christina Chade
* Jason Chan
* Sigme Okte