On April 11th, 2012, Declan McCullagh wrote for CNet on how one man is planning to create an ISP provider that was "designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance." That man is Nicholas Merrill, and if there is one person who is uniquely suited to founding a privacy first ISP, it's him. According to CNet, Merril was the first ISP exec who fought back against an FBI "national security letter" (NSL). An NSL is a letter, from a U.S. government agency (here the FBI), that asks an ISP for confidential information about their customers. Merril challenged the NSLs in 2004, and wasn't able to publicly discuss the litigation until 2010.
CNet noted that Merril wants to launch an ISP which would utilize every technological and political tool to protect its customer's privacy. Notably, the ISP would use end-to-end encryption for browsing, encrypted e-mails so even the ISP can't read them, limited logging, and gratuitous challenges to government surveillance authority. Oh, and charge about $20 a month for the entire thing. In essence, Merril wants his ISP to be incapable of complying with an FBI request for stored e-mail because customers will own their own data, and only they can decrypt it.
There's more to the CNet article, you can find it here.
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