A United States lawmaker is calling for a tactic employed in the Age of Sail to be used to target cyber criminals. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill into Congress this month that calls for the use of “cyber privateers” to combat foreign threat groups and cyber scam farms.
The “Cybercrime Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025” would issue a 21st-century version of a “Letter of Marque,” a license that granted armed vessels the authority to capture enemy merchant shipping and to commit acts that might otherwise constitute piracy.
Letters of Marque were issued to supplement a nation’s navy at times of war, and the policy was widely used in the Caribbean from the 16th to the early 19th centuries. Privateering was abolished under the Paris Declaration of 1856, but the United States refused to sign the treaty. Therefore, there is an argument that the door could be open for the U.S. to issue similar authorization for privateers in cyberspace, where the lines already blur.
“Criminal syndicates backed by foreign governments are using cyberspace to prey on American seniors, steal intellectual property, and undermine national security,” said Rep. Schweikert. “Our current tools are failing to keep pace. This legislation allows us to effectively engage these criminals and bring accountability and restitution to the digital battlefield by leveraging the same constitutional mechanism that once helped secure our nation’s maritime interests.”
The Case for Privateers
Schweikert further cited the FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report, which stated that Americans filed more than 859,000 complaints, resulting in a total of $16 billion in losses, representing a 33% increase from 2023. Americans over 60, who are increasingly targeted, also suffered nearly $5 billion in reported financial damages.
The lawmaker’s office warned that many of the cyberattacks are originating from sophisticated “scam farms” overseas, including in Myanmar and North Korea. Moreover, the large-scale operations are alleged to be state-linked and designed to steal from Americans while infiltrating U.S. digital systems.
Schweikert cited Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which he claimed granted Congress the authority to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. He noted its use in the “French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the quasi-war with France,” where he suggested the commissions played a central role in maritime defense.
His historical basis could be called into question, at least in its role in the “French and Indian War,” which took place from 1754 to 1763, and was the North American extension of the Seven Years’ War. It was fought before the American Revolution, and the Letters of Marque were issued to American colonists by the British Crown, not an act of Congress, which didn’t exist at the time.
The lawmaker did note that the federal government has not issued Letters of Marque since the War of 1812, but cited “an unusual example occurred during World War II, when a Goodyear blimp was commissioned for anti-submarine patrols off the California coast.” That is a misunderstanding of the situation, legal scholars have argued for years.
No Letter of Marque was issued, and although the airship conducted anti-submarine patrols with a civilian crew (until the U.S. Navy took it over), it shouldn’t be considered a privateer in the traditional sense. Only the airship’s captain brought his personal hunting rifle, which would have done little to confront a Japanese submarine. The bigger issue is that Congress didn’t authorize the Navy to issue a Letter of Marque.
Thus, at best, the Goodyear Blimp performed the duties of a neighborhood watch!
The Hackers Are There And Ready
There are already numerous individuals who might be willing and more than capable of signing up to serve as digital privateers.
“In a way, this has sort of been going on for a while. There are folks on YouTube who build their audiences and revenue taking apart cyber criminals,” said technology industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.
“They render their machines unusable, strip their databases, brick their networks, and do an impressive amount of damage to them,” Enderle told ClearanceJobs.
These individuals might be well-suited to going after the bad guys.
“By putting folks like this under a legal structure, you can likely better coordinate the efforts, allow them to aggregate their skills to go after bigger criminals, and provide some protections in case they piss off a hostile government or large criminal organization,” Enderle added. “Where it gets slippery is if you allow they to keep anything they take, whatever they can steal from the “alleged” criminals, because there is no due process. In effect, the privateer is judge, jury, and executioner.”
Enderle suggested that, unlike the 1700s, the government can provide oversight and more effectively keep these privateers from becoming criminals themselves.
“This last regulatory part is critical; otherwise, you are likely blessing what otherwise might also be harmful criminal behavior. This administration isn’t known for doing things well or completely suggesting that this effort will likely do more harm than good long term unless adequate controls are in place to assure the intended outcome,” said Enderle.
Is This a Viable Tactic to Combat Cybercrime?
The bigger takeaway from Schweikert’s call to authorize cyber privateers is whether such an endeavor would actually work. There is no denying that cybercriminals, notably those with ties to foreign governments like North Korea and China, are a clear and present danger to the American people.
Yet, it is unclear what any cyber privateers could do. Would they engage in hacking the hackers? Would they carry out attacks on a foreign nation, thereby escalating tensions? There wouldn’t be much “plausible deniability” if the Letters of Marque were issued!
“The hallmark of such operations is that the new era swashbucklers would be free to operate as they like so long as they have a colorable argument about how they attack designated ‘bad guys’ along the way,” explained Dr. Jim Purtilo, associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland.
“In the grey zones of cybersecurity operations, there is often genuine uncertainty about who is responsible for what, so I foresee this uncertainty being willfully exploited by sketchy operators to plunder more widely under color of law,” Purtilo told ClearanceJobs. “The bill’s sponsor may claim there will be government oversight, but let’s be real: if that were genuinely so, then it would just be a government operation in the first place. This law would give a wink and a nod to malicious behavior having nothing to do with targeting actual threat actors.”
In the Age of Sail, privateers became pirates when wars ended and their Letters of Marque expired. Facing unemployment, many turned to piracy. Cyber privateers could also see the profit potential, blurring the lines on whether the United States Congress endorses their actions.
“A particular concern is the freedom for these privateers to attack nation-states that may not recognize a nuanced distinction between US government attacks and those of our freelancing privateers,” added Purtilo. “And, how quickly can these rogue operations get us into a shooting war as others retaliate kinetically?”
