Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.

Nicholas Merrill received a hand delivered National Security Letter from the FBI in 2004, ordering him to give up data on one of his ISP customers.

Merrill opened it and read the letter while the agent waited. The first and second paragraphs told him he was hereby ordered to hand over virtually all information he possessed for one of his customers, identified by their email address, explaining that this demand was authorized by a law he’d later learn was part of the Patriot Act.

The third paragraph informed him he couldn’t tell anyone he’d even received this letter—a gag order.

He then fought a landmark, decade-plus legal battle against the FBI and the Department of Justice. As the owner of an internet service provider in the post-9/11 era, Merrill had received a secret order from the bureau to hand over data on a particular user—and he refused. He refused and won.

After that, he spent another 15 years building and managing the Calyx Institute, a nonprofit that offers privacy tools like a snooping-resistant version of Android and a free VPN that collects no logs of its users’ activities.

Now the completely anonymous phone service. The full article is worth the read.

  • sqgl@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    11·
    1 minute ago

    Fuck this. Enough spam as it is. Tie every fucking line on the planet to an id.

    Phreeli won’t, at least, offer a platform for spammers and robocallers, Merrill says. Even without knowing users’ identities, he says the company will block that kind of bad behavior by limiting how many calls and texts users are allowed, and banning users who appear to be gaming the system. “If people think this is going to be a safe haven for abusing the phone network, that’s not going to work,” Merrill says.