One day Nick got a visit from the FBI demanding he give them data on one of his customers. They asked for it in the form of a National Security Letter or NSL. Something wasn’t right about this letter. It seemed to violate the constituion. So he set out to change the law.
Learn more about Nicks work at calyxinstitute.org and phreeli.com.
Check out Cindy’s book Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (https://amzn.to/4gXuK2J).
Sponsors
Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker®. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com.
Support for this episode comes from NetSuite. NetSuite gives you visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and of course - inventory - so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. NetSuite helps you identify rising costs, automate your manual business processes, and see where to save money. KNOW your numbers. KNOW your business. And get to KNOW how NetSuite can be the source of truth for your entire company. Visit www.netsuite.com/darknet to learn more.
This show is sponsored by Maze. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet for more information.
Sources
- https://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/11/gagged_for_6_years_nick_merrill
- https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/u-s-nicholas-merrill-v-loretta-e-lynch-14-cv-9763-vm/
- https://clearinghouse.net/case/12966/
- https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/dec/06/fbi-national-security-letter-gag-order-nick-merrill
- https://www.aclu.org/documents/national-security-letters
- https://www.eff.org/cases/re-matter-2011-national-security-letter
- Cindy’s Book: Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Assembled by Tristan Ledger.
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Mixing by Proximity Sound.
Theme song created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Transcript
JACK: There’s a funny story that happened back in 1980 — no, 1888. [Music] There was this undertaker guy named Strowger, and when someone died, he would get a telephone call to come take care of the body, and business was doing well for him. But then suddenly he started receiving fewer calls. Business stopped. But he knew people were dying, so it’s like, what’s going on?