Some points to add, some of which I don't think have been made yet. It is entirely possible that Clinton, if he understands anything at all about this proposal, sincerely thinks that he's helping the cause of personal privacy. Consider that his entire education on the subject of cryptography probably consisted of a 5 minute briefing that probably went something like this: The US government is making available, for widespread public use, encryption technology developed by the greatest cryptographers in the world - NSA's. Civilian cryptographers are simply not capable of producing anything as good, so what does it matter if the keys are registered with the government? Users will still be better off than they are now, so what do they have to lose? And I bet that this would sound perfectly reasonable to the average man on the street, too. Well...I'd say we know better. And we have a big educational job to do. We need to let the public know that civilian cryptography is already quite good. Good enough that the communications industry doesn't need any "help" in the form of new chips from the government to secure its communications, thank you very much. And simple and cheap enough that it would have already have been made widely available in products such as digital cellular telephones if the government hadn't considered it "too good" and done everything they could behind the scenes to stop it. Clinton needs to learn that if he *really* wants to help the cause of civilian cryptography, he only needs to call off the goons over in NSA. We don't need their "help". We just want them to get the hell out of our private conversations and our private lives. Phil