\n<\/p>\n
As for Wilcox, he\u2019s long been one of that small group of privacy zealots who buys his SIM cards in cash with a fake name. But he hopes Phreeli will offer an easier path\u2014not just for people like him, but for normies too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know of anybody who’s ever offered this credibly before,\u201d says Wilcox. \u201cNot the usual telecom-strip-mining-your-data phone, not a black-hoodie hacker phone, but a privacy-is-normal phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, enough tech companies have pitched privacy as a feature for their commercial product that jaded consumers may not buy into a for-profit telecom like Phreeli purporting to offer anonymity. But the EFF\u2019s Cohn says that Merrill\u2019s track record shows he\u2019s not just using the fight against surveillance as a marketing gimmick to sell something. \u201cHaving watched Nick for a long time, it’s all a means to an end for him,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the end is privacy for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merrill may not<\/span> like the implications of describing Phreeli as a cellular carrier where every phone is a burner phone. But there\u2019s little doubt that some<\/em> of the company\u2019s customers will use its privacy protections for crime\u2014just as with every surveillance-resistant tool, from Signal to Tor to briefcases of cash.<\/p>\n Phreeli won\u2019t, at least, offer a platform for spammers and robocallers, Merrill says. Even without knowing users\u2019 identities, he says the company will block that kind of bad behavior by limiting how many calls and texts users are allowed, and banning users who appear to be gaming the system. \u201cIf people think this is going to be a safe haven for abusing the phone network, that\u2019s not going to work,\u201d Merrill says.<\/p>\n But some customers of his phone company will, to Merrill\u2019s regret, do bad things, he says\u2014just as they sometimes used to with pay phones, that anonymous, cash-based phone service that once existed on every block of American cities. \u201cYou put a quarter in, you didn\u2019t need to identify yourself, and you could call whoever you wanted,\u201d he reminisces. \u201cAnd 99.9 percent of the time, people weren’t doing bad stuff.\u201d The small minority who were, he argues, didn\u2019t justify the involuntary societal slide into the cellular panopticon we all live in today, where a phone call not<\/em> tied to freely traded data on the caller\u2019s identity is a rare phenomenon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n