Non-profit ISP start up promises fully encrypted, private Internet

Rick

Rick

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In an editorial piece by Cnet, Nicholas Merrill describes his upcoming Internet service, Calyx, as a "non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption". According to Merrill, his goal is to fully encrypt Internet traffic at the ISP level in order to protect the privacy of his customers. In fact, he hopes to create a system that is so private, even the ISP itself is unable to snoop on its users. Such a system could conceivably make it impossible for the ISP to respond to privacy-infringing requests, even when compelled by big media conglomerates, public officials or authorities.

The legal viability of an all-encrypted ISP appears to hinge on a provision in a 1994 federal law called CALEA. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act ensures that ISPs are not held responsible for decrypting data if they don't have the necessary information to do so. If Merrill has his way, Calyx won't have a clue what's going on under the hood of its service. This means the ISP should be able to operate squarely under this premise.

After running his own ISP in New York, Merrill picked up a thing or two about the need for privacy in today's post-9/11 climate. In 2004, he enlisted the help of the ACLU to legally fight a request by the FBI to divulge customer details without a court order. To make this situation particularly menacing, the FBI required Merrill to never publicly disclose the request or the existence of the letter. After a lengthy six-year legal scuffle and having to remain anonymous throughout the course of the trial, Merrill won the case and a federal judge struck down a portion of the Patriot Act which made it illegal to defy an FBI gag order. United States District Judge Victor Marrero described the provision as an "unconstitutional prior restraint of speech in violation of the First Amendment."

After dealing with the FBI and the U.S. legal system for six years, the entrepreneur was inspired to design an ISP where privacy is integrated into its virtual DNA. As a result, Merrill has created the Calyx Institute and woven together an advisory board with the likes of former NSA technical director Brian Snow and TOR project leader Jacob Applebaum. 

Merrill will be meeting up with potential West-coast investors in the next couple weeks as he attempts to raise $2 million before the service launches.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/48141-non-profit-isp-start-up-promises-fully-encrypted-private-internet.html

 
I fully support everything this guy is trying do achieve. Here's to hoping that he can make this possible...
 
If this works, I predict pedophiles, criminals, spammers, terrorists, etc. will flock to this service and then the Government will create new laws that makes the ISP be able to decrypt data and provide the information they want. Bottom line, this sounds like a good idea in theory, not so much in practice.
 
@CaptainCranky

The guy does look kinda sketchy, I'd be willing to bet this is some new tactic the FBI is using to catch people.
 
@Capt.

It prolly is. More then likely they may want ppl to jump on this. That way they have all the ppl who want the privacy to do whatever, under one umbrella. It would be a scream if it was true. Not that I would ever need that level of privacy but it is a great idea in principle. However if RIAA/MPAA have their way this will be shot down and the next information we hear about it, is that the this guy is found dead. Choked to death on his mouse or something.
 
I don't get the feeling that this guy is working with the government.

Also, every time some ISP does something "bad" we all comment that if you don't like it, get a new ISP. But then there is the inevitable comeback that there is no alternative. This guy is making the alternative.
 
>Also, every time some ISP does something "bad" we all comment that if you don't like it, get a new ISP. But then there is the inevitable comeback that there is no alternative. This guy is making the alternative.

This JULY 2012, the majority of the major USA ISP will be implementing the "Three Strikes" agreement that was promoted by the RIAA, MPAA, and various other intellectual property companies to prevent undesirable file sharing. A common database will be used to share information. It is worded as "Six Strikes" to appease politicians, but from the consumers' viewpoint is realistically more like "Three Strikes".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alert_system

Sharing info about alleged activities prevents alleged bad users from taking their business to a different ISP which was the main method users had to prevent ISP from enforcing onerous measures on their customers. In the new system, moving to a new ISP will not cause the user to have a "new record" because all the allegations and warnings will be available in the database for the new ISP to use. By having the initial framework and infrastructure costs underwritten by the IP firms, and removing the fear that customers would leave an ISP to go to a new one, the graduated response Three Strikes agreement seems to be the most effective approach yet. It addresses the fear that ISP have about losing customers. By having no alternatives for customers to go to, the Three Strikes agreement of graduated response will work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_response

Another feature of the Three Strikes agreement is that it is crafted to avoid triggering usa constitutional defenses. Thus, customers cannot defeat it with #1 or #4 amendments. It doesn't always require termination of the customer's account, but instead allows for bandwidth throttling down to 56K dialup speeds even though you had paid for verizon FiOS rates. If the user quits an annual plan, he would have to first buy out the plan per TOS (ouch) and then move to another ISP with similar FiOS speed. But at that point, the user would find that the graduated response Three Strikes agreement causes the user to once again get dialup speed from the new ISP even if it is Comcast. Yes, comcast, verizon, and other major ISP are members of the industry plan.

Because the agreement is not about legal convictions, concepts like "person of interest" or "alleged" copyright violations may be kept in the database and shared by the member companies for use against unruly customers. Another benefit is that if the unruly customer has someone else in the same household purchase the internet account, the ISP would be able to continue to enforce the throttling activity at the point where the unruly customer is continuing to perform alleged bad behaviour.
 
Did you guys just read the NSA's new super center in Utah that TS posted about? They are building a super center to record all of the information over the internet / networks in its entirety, then building mass server hass in hopes to harness the massive amounts of computing power needed to decrypt the encryption.

So hopefully this ISP's encryption isnt easily subsided.
 
Since i dont do anything i would call highly illigal apart from watching "pirate" videos on you tube and the odd torrent i realy would not be intrested in this.

Im sure there are plenty of peadophiles, hackers, ect who would.
 
ISP's should be non-profit anyways. I also support the private part. It should not be the ISP's responsibility to police the internet. They have other ways of discovering criminals and finding them.
 
I feel as if every time someone comments with "Now the pedophiles and terrorists will benefit from this" it sounds like world war 2 propaganda "The Russians will benefit from you drinking alcohol"

Think about it, Silly and preposterous... There are many options for these pedophiles and terrorists considering they're not getting caught.
 
I think this is a wonderful idea. Full encryption on everything i do so that my ISP doens't even know what have been looking at? YES PLEASE!!
Do I do anything that requires that short of security, well not really. Check my bank account online sometimes but that already has SSL built into it. Why do I like this then? Because I don't like people spying on me even if I'm doing nothing wrong!!!!
If this is a legitimate service I really home it comes to my area in the near future. And I hope the idea catches on.
 
internet usage encryption needs to start at the users level, not the ISP level. so what ever you send over the internet is masked, and can only be unmasked by you.

or did you guys forget the FBI freak out during the 90s, over user generated encryption and decryption protocals.
 
In today's govt this just seems too good to be true... which is not right in the first place.
 
Guest said:
If this works, I predict pedophiles, criminals, spammers, terrorists, etc. will flock to this service and then the Government will create new laws that makes the ISP be able to decrypt data and provide the information they want. Bottom line, this sounds like a good idea in theory, not so much in practice.
Click to expand...
Well that is ignorant. Those parties would already be using the Dark Net and so an encrypted ISP will not do much for them.

-_-…
 
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This guy is cutting edge. I totally support this minimalist approach to ISP service. One less entity for the government to keep in their pocket.
 
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