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For Merrill, the fight for privacy in telecommunications is a personal one. In 2004, as the owner of an internet service provider, Merrill received a secret FBI order to hand over data on a particular user—and he refused. What ensued was a decade-plus legal battle. 🔗 www.wired.com/story/new-an...

Now, Merrill has launched a phone company: Phreeli (as in “speak freely”) aims to give its users the closest thing possible to anonymity, a goal it achieves by collecting almost no identifiable information about them. 🔗 www.wired.com/story/new-an...

4/12/25, 5:35 pm4 reposts36 likes

Customers can sign up with just a ZIP code, the minimum personal data Phreeli needs for tax purposes. And a new encryption system based on "zero-knowledge proofs" means it can accept credit card payments without linking that data to any user’s account. www.wired.com/story/new-an...

wired.comA New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up With Nothing but a Zip CodePrivacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.

If the government comes to Phreeli with a court order to hand over user information, well…it can’t hand over what it never collected in the first place.

TheBaroness 🍈

@thebaroness.bsky.social