again, more black/white cpunk thought that goes along the lines, "unless we have won everything, we have lost everything". you guys are awfully cynical. clipper has failed its original objectives by miles. the last-ditch efforts by bureacrats to get some semblance of "key escrow" from recent developments are increasingly pathetic. I'd say the significant dilution of clipper over the years is a very strong victory for pro-privacy, pro-cryptography advocates. the Clipper proposals are increasingly moving into the area of "key management". large companies will always want key management features, to deal with employees who forget passwords, leave the company, etc.-- face it, this is a simple reality. essentially all the latest moves amount to, imho, is the government trying to get its fingers into these key management infrastructures. so the recent stuff that is emerging, I would hesitate to call "gak". it sounds more like "gaki", or government access to key infrastructures. these infrastructures are going to be built up regardless of what cpunks wish-- private businesses simply must have them. frankly all it looks like to me is the government saying, "we reserve the right to subpoena keys". this will always be the case. bureacrats are always trying to pass new laws when old ones already apply.
It is a done deal, --Lucky, who told you this three years ago.
again, more simplistic summaries. there is a whole range of evil proposals that the government could be involved in, and we have to begin to discriminate between them. the government could be the sole manager of all key infrastructures and the entity that licenses all crypto for any use-- that I would consider total worse case reality. or the government could have tentacles stuck into key infrastructures that businesses build up. the latter is not quite as odious or threatening. in fact it simply sounds like the government saying, "we reserve the right to subpoena keys". (of course the latter could always evolve into the former. I suppose the cynics would contend that it is inevitable.)