Meet Xmission: The ISP Focused on Privacy

Earlier this week, I highlighted alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, which focuses on privacy and claims that: “if the NSA demanded data there would be none to hand over.” Today’s article focuses on a little known internet service provider (ISP) called Xmission, which is based in Utah and has 30,000 subscribers. Ironically, it is situated close to the NSA’s new multi-billion dollar spy center and it has received rave reviews from the always excellent Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). It’s founder, Pete Ashdown is a brave man who, unlike his larger tech peers, has consistently stood up to the government and intelligence services to protect his customers’ Constitutional rights. From The Guardian:

Silicon Valley’s role in US government surveillance has triggered public anxiety about the internet, but it turns out there is at least one tech company you can trust with your data. The only problem: it’s a relative minnow in the field, operating from offices in Utah.

Xmission, Utah’s first independent and oldest internet service provider, has spent the past 15 years resolutely shielding customers’ privacy from government snoops in a way that larger rivals appear to have not.

The company, a comparative midget with just 30,000 subscribers, cited the Fourth Amendment in rebuffing warrantless requests from local, state and federal authorities, showing it was possible to resist official pressure.

“I would tell them I didn’t need to respond if they didn’t have a warrant, that (to do so) wouldn’t be constitutional,” the founder and chief executive, Pete Ashdown, said in an interview at his Salt Lake City headquarters.

Since 1998 he rejected dozens of law enforcement requests, including Department of Justice subpoenas, on the grounds they violated the US constitution and state law. “I would tell them, please send us a warrant, and then they’d just drop it.”

Ashdown was wary about Silicon Valley’s carefully worded insistence that the government had no direct access to servers. Access to networks, not servers, was the key, he said.

EFF’s most recent Who Has Your Back report – an annual ranking of privacy protection by big tech companies – gave Twitter the maximum of six stars and just one each to Apple and Yahoo.

The agency’s online snooping betrayed public trust, he said. “Post 9/11 paranoia has turned this into a surveillance state. It’s not healthy.”

The only solution to internet snooping was encryption, he said, a point he repeated on a blog.

Thank you Pete, for all you’ve done and continue to do.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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