

Ask HN: Legal barriers to starting an anonymous ISP? - blintson

Anybody know of any case where there was an ISP that was by design not capable of identifying its' customers? Are there any laws specifically against charging for anonymous wireless access?
======
rcoder
If you're thinking of operating in the USA, you should read up on
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement (CALEA). CALEA pretty much
requires that you be able to associate a name with any IP on your network, so
you're going to have a hard time operating as an ISP without any personally-
identifying information about your customers.

Regardless, if you can figure out a way to anonymously collect payment for
services online without either getting ripped off by your own customers or
leaving a paper trail for law enforcement to subpoena, then you have a far
more valuable commodity than simple bandwidth to offer. In fact, you would
have invented "digital cash", and any number of folks (afore-mentioned law
enforcement and tax agencies amongst them) will race each other to control or
use it.

~~~
blintson
Wouldn't touch online payments. I was thinking you take cash at a store front
and get a randomly generated key that gives you bandwidth for a certain time.

~~~
swolchok
Surely, law enforcement would find an excuse (quite possibly even a legitimate
one) to put said store front under surveillance.

------
bugs
I'm sure that as soon as something bad or illegal starts occurring on that isp
like say child pornography or even something like anonymous bomb threats
someone is going to have to be held accountable and if you can't point people
in the right direction it might end up on you.

