Last year Oxford press published a book called The Invisible Weapon - it details, from 1851 - 1945, how governments, esp. the British have used "backdoors" into coded messages to watch/listen/read messages. At one time the British has a strangle hold on world wide telegram service. They made very strong claims that they would never read their clients (often other governments) mail, but instead went to detailed and expensive measures to insure that in fact they could/did. The IBSN # is :0-19-506273-6 We should read this book (I have) so in the up coming debate on the Clipper, we can frame the Clipper in the rich historical context it deserves to be placed in. -- Harry Shapiro habs@panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991