Many of us bare our souls to Facebook. Google data mines our mail and our searches to plumb our psyches. Whatever privacy is left can now be breached without a warrant by the government and complicit telecoms and ISPs.
You have no privacy
But, perhaps, you could. The story of a bold dream you can make real unfolds below the little orange cloud
Nicholas Merrill is the first ISP exec to fight government attempts to get information about his customers and win. Now he wants to start a company to provide telephone service and internet access where the customers' privacy comes first.
When the government started asking telecoms to provide information about their customers without warrants, only Nacchio and Merrill stood their ground. Nacchio (Qwest) was personally ruined and the company destroyed. Merrill won.
His company's approach will be to make a company that is unable to comply with requests from the NSA, FBI, or other authorities. CNET has a great article and I encourage you to read more about Merrill and his company there.
Can a free people exist without private communication? Could a tyrannical government crush any dissent if it inspected every communication? The answers are "no" and "yes".
We already see how dissent is softly controlled. Remember last fall when Twitter wouldn't trend #OWS and YouTube videos of police violence against citizens continued to show only 1900 viewers after they'd gone completely viral? Was that their idea, or were they controlled?
What if the next step isn't so soft? knock knock "Good evening sir, do you go by the name Mosquito Pilot on Daily Kos?"
"Yes"
"Please come with us. We want to talk with you about some of your diaries and comments there as well as some emails and phone calls you've made lately."
"Those zip ties are kinda tight"
"Shut up"
Nicholas Merrill's company is seeking crowd sourced start up funding.
If you oppose warrantless wiretaps and government inspection of your private communications, help his company get off the ground.
The Constitutional freedoms you save may be your own.