Slate reports on a New York entrepreneur’s plans for an encryption-based telecommunications provider designed to be “untappable.” Currently in development, the telecommunications infrastructure would inhibit mass surveillance by using end-to-end encryption for Web browsing and e-mail and a mobile phone service that would enable users to encrypt calls, the report states. Entrepreneur Nicholas Merrill crowd-funded almost $70,000 in donations and says he has held talks with interested venture capitalists and a few “really big companies” interested in partnering with him. In 2004, Merrill challenged the FBI when it demanded he hand over customer information from his Internet service. Merrill says privacy and cybersecurity can each be achieved with ubiquitous encryption.
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