Well, this and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee, but here's my letter to the Pres. ------ I oppose the Clipper chip vehemently. As the President, or the duly authorized representative of the President, you will understand that I find the idea that you will monitor my communications reprehensible and intolerable. You have espoused a policy of covert surveillance of American citizens of which Bush would be proud. You, a protester of the Vietnam War, who understands that the government can, and should be opposed when it is wrong, should understand why privacy is necessary to the people of any democracy, lest it cease to be a democracy. Nevertheless, you approved the Clipper Chip proposal, which is the furthest step backward that even a politician could take. Shame on you! Even George Bush's father, Prescott Bush, who despised and opposed Senator McCarthy's Communist witch-hunt, would loathe such a retrogressive move! We computer professionals, who supported your rise to power, feel betrayed by your sudden reversal, by no means unique among your sudden reversals. By siding with those who would rob Americans of those freedoms which are our inalienable right, you have betrayed democracy and made a sham of the Bill of Rights. If, as a White House official suggested, criminalizing alternative, secure encryption standards is an "option on the table," I am disgusted by your betrayal. You, who seemed proud to have protested an unjust war, and should understand why protest, even anonymous protest, should be an inalienable right, have no right even to consider this as an option. If you consider criminalizing privacy, and encryption, you have signed over the soul of the nation to be monitored at will by the NSA and CIA, organizations which you, at one time in your life, opposed. Perhaps, like many Sixties rebels, you have been bought by the government, and no longer care about the rights of the American people. It would not be the only time this has occurred. While I doubt that you, the President, shall read this, perhaps some subordinate shall. Perhaps, if the miraculous is possible, that subordinate shall deem this worthy of your consideration. While I am not used to pleading, I plead that you reconsider this policy, which, if enacted, would doom privacy in the United States, and turn this nation into the sort of nation that the Soviet Union has finally decided not to be. I beg that you consider, at least for a moment, the evil that you may unleash. You may be motivated by an understandable concern for the protection of the American people from drug dealers and mobsters, but it is not the mobsters you shall crush in supporting the Clipper chip. It is those eager, agile young minds who oppose the government when it is wrong, and only wish to be able to have their voice, without being monitored by the CIA and NSA in case that voice occasionally is overly strident. Thank you, Mr. President. I hope that you have carefully studied the holy Consitution of this nation, which you have sworn to uphold. I fear for the consequences if you have not. Robert W. F. Clark 440 S. Franklin St. Bloomfield, IN 47424 Telephone # (812) 384-3465 email addresses: clark@metal.psu.edu rclark@nyx.cs.du.edu