Post #32794
2025-12-05 10:02 UTC
Nicholas Merrill received a hand delivered National Security Letter from the FBI in 2004, ordering him to give up data on one of his 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.
Replies (5)
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@sqgl@sh.itjust.works 2025-12-05 10:02
archive.is/…/new-anonymous-phone-carrier-sign-up-…
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@CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 2025-12-05 10:41
Fuck this. Enough spam as it is. Tie every fucking line on the planet to an id.
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@ohellidk@sh.itjust.works 2025-12-05 14:11
Kind of sounds like a honeypot...
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@athairmor@lemmy.world 2025-12-05 14:54
Anonymous but they need your address or ZIP+4 just to check if you are in their service area. This definitely isn’t their own network. I can’t tell how you pay for it without giving them an address. Unless it’s like Mullvad where you can buy a code with cash if you like, I fail to see how it’s anonymous. Your cell tower connections can still be traced back to you. I couldn’t find anything on their website to explain how it’s anonymous.
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@homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2025-12-05 14:44
Whats their website? Hilariously, all the search shows me are articles about it.