Nicholas Merrill

Nicholas Merrill
Nicholas Merrill in 2010
Born	New York, New York, U.S.
Education	Hampshire College
Occupation	Executive Director, The Calyx Institute
Employer	The Calyx Institute

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 first person to file a constitutional challenge against the National Security Letters statute in the USA PATRIOT Act.

After receiving a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI, he sued the FBI and Department of Justice and became the plaintiff in the lawsuit Doe v. Ashcroft (filed April 9, 2004 in the United States) filed on behalf of a formerly unknown ISP owner by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union against the U.S. federal government.

The letter—on FBI letterhead—requested that Merrill provide 16 categories of "electronic communication transactional records," including e-mail address, account number and billing information. Most of the other categories remain redacted by the FBI.

Merrill never complied with the FBI's National Security Letter request, and eventually—several years into the lawsuit—the FBI decided it no longer wanted the information it had demanded and dropped its demand for records. However, for several years after dropping the demand, the FBI continued to prevent Merrill from publicly speaking about the NSL, or even from being publicly identified as the recipient of the NSL.