Re: The Atlantic, June 1994. The article is another "Nothing to Worry About". The article unfortunately occurs in the same issue that has a feature article about the possibility of Russian gangs obtaining nuclear weapons which also details how the coup attempt was observed by the NSA and Bush decided to let the good guys know so that the attempt could be thwarted. The NSA opposed letting them know since it would reveal their abilities, but Bush took the chance that this was not as bad as having a bunch of hardliners controllng the big bombs. This feature article will certainly give people the impression that crypto must be controlled or is at least a very important millitary matter. Now the NSA can't listen in, the article reported, but who knows what they've done since then. I hope to write a letter responding to Fallows' article, but right off I noticed some errors: he states that the millitary and intelligence services will use Clipper themselves when in fact, it would not be approved for secret information. (Recently someone noted that this is probably due to the key handling methods, but it could certainly be due to escrow itself as being risky.) Additionally, he brushes aside the accepted cryptographic methods (open inspection and testing) as being frivolous. (This seems to be a result of the NSA envy and pride runs through the article.) Paul E. Baclace peb@netcom.com