April 12, 2012, 10:38 AM —
flickr/Tony Fischer Photography
Nicholas Merrill fought the FBI's request for access to confidential information, and won. He wants to go national.
Using the non-profit Calyx Institute, with for-profit subsidiaries, Merrill plans a privacy-first ISP and eventually mobile wireless carrier. Based on the wireless 4G provider Clear, Merrill adds end-to end encryption to all communications, including email. This allows him to block CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) requests for user information, because he won't have the ability to read the encrypted data.
While the FBI and other government snoops certainly don't appreciate Merrill's business plan, they have no way to actively fight against his new ISP. As more and more ISPs get involved in the "Going Dark" movement, surveillance will be more difficult. Of course, as they did in 2008 after the scandal broke about AT&T proving special rooms for the NSA to monitor traffic, Congress can make illegal surveillance practices retroactively legal.
Privacy matters
The irony is that illegal surveillance is the only time our representatives express an interest in our opinions.
zerovector on reddit.com
Being a customer of Calyx may even become probable cause. I don't like this, but this is what I think will happen.
rlpb on news.ycombinator.com
Personally I think this is very exciting. Governments' game has been to make secret deals for surveillance; by announcing openly that they won't cooperate, this company will either succeed or may force the government to state openly the level of surveillance they demand.
billybob on news.ycombinator.com
For the first free market response to the stasi-fication of US telecoms, you sir, get all my monies. Seriously. How do I invest?
LucyRetardo on reddit.com
Privacy as good business
This will sell like hot cakes, & not only in the US. Sounds like a great proposition!
passing_through on cnet.com
I like the idea, and I especially like the idea of a 501c3 (which subsidizes the added costs over commercial baseline) coupled with a commercial company (which charges normal rates for service.
rdl on news.ycombinator.com
Well I'll join since I don't have anything to hide but I do believe in promoting the right to privacy. At least it will be demonstrating to the market that privacy is a selling point.
Fingal on cnet.com
The minute this becomes available I'm buying. No more throttling from corrupt ISP's.
thedirtyrussian on reddit.com
Privacy doesn't matter
If he can't offer competitive speeds, the privacy doesn't matter.
whitesites on cnet.com
The biggest problem is that 99.99% of users totally don't care, though.
rdl on news.ycombinator.com
Those interested can contribute at IndieGogo.
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