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Super-Privacy-Protecting ISP In the Planning

Posted by samzenpus on from the secret-surfing dept.

h00manist writes "Nicholas Merrill ran a New York based ISP and got tired of federal 'information requests.' He is now planning an ISP which would be built from the ground up for privacy. Everything encrypted, maximum technical and legal resistance to information requests. Merrill has formed an advisory board with members including Sascha Meinrath from the New America Foundation; former NSA technical director Brian Snow; and Jacob Appelbaum from the Tor Project. Kickstarter-like IndieGoGo has a project page."

19 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. License to print money by Tommy+Bologna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If he pulls this off, he will be very well off. I suspect it will take the dinosaur telcos eons before they understand how to adjust, and by then it just may be too late.

    1. Re:License to print money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Probably more like an invitation for an FBI raid.

    2. Re:License to print money by CodeHxr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If they* don't just pass a law declaring that this type of operation is illegal.

      (* they == anyone with the power [directly or otherwise] to enact/enable such a law)

    3. Re:License to print money by StikyPad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If he pulls this off, expect tougher laws on data collection requirements for ISPs.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    4. Re:License to print money by demonbug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm trying to figure this post out - did you put it up ironically, like, "Hey, look how completely uninformed this Russian guy is about the U.S., isn't this funny?" Or were you actually serious? The cluelessness meter is off the charts, but I can't tell if it is a joke or not...

    5. Re:License to print money by koan · · Score: 4, Informative

      ISP's are required by law to maintain logs.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    6. Re:License to print money by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 4, Informative

      When they say "the right to pray" what the mean is "the right to make others pray, or at least feel marginalized by forcing them to stand out as not part of the group if they choose not to participate."

      Anyone can pray anytime, anywhere. A kid can pray in school. What CAN'T happen is the school can;t LEAD A PRAYER and therefore use authority to enforce that religion.

      That's what they are really saying, but they LIE CONSTANTLY about it, those moral religious folks.

      --
      This space available.
    7. Re:License to print money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here is what you want to read.
      http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/s1738

      Sec. 501. Reporting requirements of electronic communication service providers and remote computing service providers.
      To
      save you time - Nowhere does it claim they HAVE to maintain certain records or monitor etc... in fact they explicitly state that, however once asked for information they do have to provide information they do have and such requests are to handled as a request to preserve records (that do exist at the time of receipt).

  2. TFS is confusing. by idontgno · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nicholas Merrill ran a New York based ISP and got tired of federal 'information requests'....maximum technical and legal resistance to information requests.

    He's tired of fighting The Man, so he's going to set up a new ISP which will let him fight The Man even more? That doesn't even begin to approach making sense. Is this like Fight Club or something?

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    1. Re:TFS is confusing. by Tommy+Bologna · · Score: 5, Funny

      Shhh, we don't talk about Fight Club.

    2. Re:TFS is confusing. by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nicholas Merrill ran a New York based ISP and got tired of federal 'information requests'....maximum technical and legal resistance to information requests.

      He's tired of fighting The Man, so he's going to set up a new ISP which will let him fight The Man even more? That doesn't even begin to approach making sense. Is this like Fight Club or something?

      Its actually quite ingenious... He's going to create an ISP where it is much-more-difficult to compromise a users privacy. They're designing it from the ground up to be PATRIOT-Act proof because it will literally be impossible for them to give the feds the data they want. It is fewer fights, but may amount to one HUGE fight with the biggest gorilla on earth, the U.S. Justice Department.

      Another possibility, however, is if he gets anywhere close to a working model where this is possible that he suddenly has an "accident," or his data-center suffers a "mysterious fire." Or maybe the CIA kills his network engineers the way Israel kills mechanical engineers they think can build high-speed centrifuges in Iran.

      --
      Who did what now?
    3. Re:TFS is confusing. by cdrguru · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Far closer to the idea that he has 100 customers but needs 10,000 to fund the operations. Can something like this ever get enough customers to operate? Not if they charge a penny more than a non-privacy protecting ISP - it simply isn't a priority for most people. A few, yes, and that is all the customers something like this would ever have.

      Far too few to make a go of it. No reason for anyone to attack it - it will die of lack of interest.

    4. Re:TFS is confusing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      You are missing the obvious business model where he signs up a bunch of pedos/terrorists/ron paul supporters and then sells the info to the feds.

    5. Re:TFS is confusing. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its actually quite ingenious... He's going to create an ISP where it is much-more-difficult to compromise a users privacy. They're designing it from the ground up to be PATRIOT-Act proof because it will literally be impossible for them to give the feds the data they want. It is fewer fights, but may amount to one HUGE fight with the biggest gorilla on earth, the U.S. Justice Department.

      It is not without precedent. After the PATRIOT Act made it legal to for the feds to confiscate book borrowing records from libraries without even a warrant, most libraries switched over to lending software that deleted all records once a book was returned. So, at worst, the feds could find out what a patron currently had checked out, but no borrowing history was available to anyone.

      As far as I know, the DOJ hasn't tried, at least in court, to make a library use a less privacy-preserving system.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    6. Re:TFS is confusing. by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're designing it from the ground up to be PATRIOT-Act proof because it will literally be impossible for them to give the feds the data they want. It is fewer fights, but may amount to one HUGE fight with the biggest gorilla on earth, the U.S. Justice Department.

      Who he already fought. This guy is the same guy who fought (successfully), the national security letter he recieved in 2007.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    7. Re:TFS is confusing. by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Shhh, we don't talk about Fight Club.

      I thought that was Usenet...

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    8. Re:TFS is confusing. by tinfoiler · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Absolutely, I would love to see how much AT&T has made in the last ten years of selling customer records.

  3. NSA Director? by stevegee58 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Former or not, still sounds like a 5th column in the making.

  4. Fishy by Hentes · · Score: 4, Funny

    former NSA technical director Brian Snow

    It's a trap!