The Calyx Institute is a
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
-based
501(c)(3) research and education nonprofit organization formed to make privacy and digital security more accessible. It was founded in 2010 by
Nicholas Merrill
Nicholas Merrill is an American system administrator, computer programmer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Calyx Internet Access, an Internet and hosted service provider founded in 1995, and of the non-profit Calyx Institute. He was the fi ...
, Micah Anderson, and Kobi Snitz.
History
The Calyx Institute was founded on May 19, 2010, through a filing with the New York Department of State. Its original office consisted of a single desk in a law firm in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...
.
In 2011, Calyx was described in an article in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and also entered into the
Congressional Record
The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record In ...
as a new non-profit that "aims to study how to protect consumers' privacy". The same year, ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' described it as an organization that "promotes 'best practices' with regard to privacy and freedom of expression in the telecommunications industry" In April 2012,
Declan McCullagh at ''
CNET'' published an in-depth profile of the Institute and its plans to develop best practices and proof-of-concept software for running a privacy-focused internet service provider and phone company. The following month, the security publication ''
CSO Online'' described the organization's plan as: "By showing there is a market demand for privacy, The Calyx Institute hopes to nudge telecoms in a positive direction and intends to 'release all software developed under an open source model as well as all underlying policies and network designs.
On December 4, 2014, the Calyx Institute received its 501(c)(3) determination letter from the
IRS
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...
, giving it the status of "public charity" and making donations to it tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
In 2017, it moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, renting office space in the
Industry City
Industry City (also Bush Terminal) is a historic intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex on the Upper New York Bay waterfront in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. The northern portion, commonly cal ...
development.
In 2020, the Calyx Institute was a signer of an open letter asking
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
to be more transparent regarding user data being shared with law enforcement.
Leadership
The Calyx Institute's board of directors originally consisted of Nicholas Merrill, Micah Anderson, and Kobi Snitz; in 2016, attorney Carey Shenkman joined the board.
The Institute also has an advisory board, which consists of Enrique Piracés, Isabela Bagueros, Jonathan Askin, Matt Mitchell, Sandra Ordoñez, and Sascha Meinrath. Past advisors included
Brian Snow
Brian Snow (September 5, 1943December 4, 2022) served in the U.S. National Security Agency from 1971 to 2006, including a six-year term as Technical Director of the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD), which is the defensive arm of the NSA, ...
,
Susan N. Herman,
John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...
, and
Bob Barr
Robert Laurence Barr Jr. (born November 5, 1948) is an American attorney and politician. He served as a federal prosecutor and as a Congressman. He represented Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Barr atta ...
.
Funding
The majority of the Calyx Institute's funding comes from its membership program. In its early years it received minor funding from
Internews
Internews Network, now Internews, is a 501(c)(3) organization incorporated in California, formed in 1982. It was founded by David M. Hoffman, Kim Spencer, and Evelyn Messinger. The president and CEO is Jeanne Bourgault.
Internews Europe is an ...
, the
Wau Holland Foundation, the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the dea ...
, and
NLnet
The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking operat ...
.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs of o ...
donated $2,500 in 2017 to support Calyx's mission, and the following year selected it as a participating organization in its Privacy Challenge crowdfunding campaign, through which it raised over $18,000.
The Calyx Institute accepts donations in
Bitcoin
Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...
, which allows anonymity, but requires an email address for acknowledgement if desired.
Grantmaking
The Calyx Institute has given grants and other financial assistance to a number of organizations and projects including
CryptoHarlem,
MuckRock's Hacking History project, and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
Tools
*
CalyxOS is a fork of the
Android Open Source Project
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of deve ...
that aims to give users better privacy and control over their personal data.
* SeedVault is an open-source data backup application for
Android. Calyx Institute is credited for
LineageOS
LineageOS is an Android-based operating system for smartphones, tablet computers, and set-top boxes, with mostly free and open-source software. It is the successor to CyanogenMod, from which it was forked in December 2016, when Cyanogen Inc. an ...
including SeedVault backup.
* Datura is an open-source firewall application built in CalyxOS for controlling the per-app network access.
* Calyx Institute runs CalyxVPN, a free
VPN service
A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geoblocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.
A wide ...
that does not require an email address or any personally identifiable information from the user. It is based on an open-source system called LEAP, which uses OpenVPN.
* In January 2014, The Calyx Institute announced it had set up a new
XMPP
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), ...
chat service, Calyx XMPP Service, at that time unique in forcing the use of end-to-end encryption using
off-the-record messaging
Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of AES symmetric-key algorithm with 128 bits key length, the Diffie–Hellman key exchange with 1536 bi ...
and leveraging
DNSSEC
The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protoco ...
and
DANE as well as making itself accessible as a
Tor hidden service.
* In 2015, a coalition of organizations consisting of the
EFF, the
Freedom of the Press Foundation,
NYU Law, the Calyx Institute, and the
Berkman Center created a website called Canary Watch in order to provide a compiled list of all companies providing
warrant canaries, with prompt updates of any changes in a canary's state. It is often difficult for users to ascertain a canary's validity on their own and thus Canary Watch aimed to provide a simple display of all active canaries and any blocks of time that they were not active.
Conferences
The Calyx Institute has participated multiple times in the
DEFCON
The defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert state used by the United States Armed Forces. (DEFCON is not mentioned in the 2010 and newer document)
The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and unified and spec ...
hacker conference and the
HOPE
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.
As a verb, its definitions include: "expect with confidence" and "to cherish ...
conference, and has also participated in the Hackers Next Door conference.
It has also sponsored and presented at the Internet Freedom Festival.
Reception
The Calyx Institute's membership program provides mobile Internet access as a benefit. This was recommended in September 2016 by
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog '' Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent o ...
in an article in ''
Boing Boing
''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice ...
'' entitled "I have found a secret tunnel that runs underneath the phone companies and emerges in paradise", and in January 2017 by Jake Swearingen in ''
New York Magazine
''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...
''.
Since 2013, the Calyx Institute has been cited as an example of Internet users' being interested in protecting their privacy and related to Merrill's successful challenge of a
national security letter
A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena issued by the United States government to gather information for national security purposes. NSLs do not require prior approval from a judge. The Stored Communications Act, Fair Cred ...
. Its Internet offerings have been called "an exception not the norm".
In 2019, several Calyx Institute servers were included in a study of the oldest, longest-running Tor exit nodes.
In a 2021 review of CalyxVPN, TechRadar called Calyx Institute a "long established non-profit" and said it was unusual in being "powered by donations" without ads and using open-source software.
References
External links
* {{Official website, https://calyxinstitute.org
Canary Watch websiteCalyxOS website
Computer security organizations
Internet privacy organizations
501(c)(3) organizations
2010 establishments in New York City
Non-profit organizations based in Brooklyn