An excerpt from the THE SPOTLIGHT newspaper April 11, 1994 from its TECHNOLOGY & LIBERTY column. "TV THAT WATCHES YOU" "In a little-noticed agreement reported in Washington Technology Week Bell Atlantic, General Instruments Corporation, & the National Institute of Science & Technology(NIST) have agree to build Clipper chips into future General Instruments cable-TV boxes." "It's a landmark agreement, & the mainstream media has been virtually silent on the subject. But what does the agreement mean?" "For starters, it means your high-tech cable box of the future will have all the "privacy protection" of your Clinton Clipper telephone. It is designed to snitch on you." "For example, you'll soon be able to order merchandise through your high-tech cable TV. And the Clipper chip implanted in your cable box wil flag every purchase as yours. Maybe you contribute to church causes? Use your cable box for tithes & it could be "profiled". Do you watch pay- per-view movies? Big Brother could soon be critiquing your viewing habits." "Starting to get the picture? The Clipper chip is designed to auto- matically identify every cable TV transaction you make. It can report your favorite programs & films. It can mark your buying habits." "And since Clipper's actual capabilities are still top-secret, it could theoretically be even more sinister. It could even contain logic to encrypt signals from monitoring equipment built into your cable box, such as a miniature video camera or infrared sensor (like the cameras & sensors already built into experimental cable boxes used by the Arbitron & Nielson rating services to monitor who is in the room with the TV on)." "General Instruments Corporation (GI) has a near-monopoly on the production of home cable-TV receivers. As a result, the "quiet" Clipper agreement virtually assures that Clipper chips will be insin- uated into the cable boxes of almost 90% of American's cable sub- scribers, all of whom have GI's cable equipment." This looks like really bad news to me! Maybe the free market could help? How about "CLIPPER FREE" labels on small companies cable_TV receivers. If the company could get away with it, it might really help their sales. Maybe foreign companies could come in with Clipper-frees? They could scream trade- war if the feds tried to stop them. American companies could then claim unfair restrictions were keeping them from being competitive. An even better possibility presents itself! How about the poss- ibility of a pirate cottage industry in disabling Clipper chips. Would the TV work with a broken Clipper. How about jumping around the Clipper chip? If that doesn't work, then an anti-clipper chip that goes in parallel or in series with the Clipper or replaces it? I don't know much about electronics. There has been for years a small in- dustry in producing "pirate" cable boxes. Imagine the possibilities with the anti-chip business. Electronic hackers working their way though college by installing off-shore produced anti-Clipper chips. Also individuals making a living from this or a good moonlighting job. If the feds outlaw this - THEN EVEN BETTER! An off the books, non-taxed business employing skilled technical people & habituating the population to engaging in federally unlawful activities! I predict that in coming years, the productive general population is going to become boldly contemptful of the big state. In this atmosphere, anti-Clipper activity will be well received & popularly endorsed. We will see a booming underground electronic privacy industry. What would the new chip's name be? THE ANTI-CLIPper? THE FREEDOM CHIP? THE WACO? THE WEAVER FAMILY? THE ANARCHIST CHIP? THE EQUALIZER CHIP? THE CYPHERPUNK CHIP? THE PRIVACY CHIP? THE YOU'LL-MIND-YOUR-OWN-DAM'D-BUSINESS CHIP? THE NEUROMANCER CHIP? THE ANTI-STATE CHIP? THE REVOLT CHIP? THE CLIP CLIPPER CHIP? THE NO-FEDS CHIP? THE CLIPPER CLIPPER CHIP? Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWWAAAYYYY BBAAACCCKKK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE!