Well, one way I've described the clipper to a non-computer literate person is to have them imagine a situation where the government required that you gave them a copy of your housekey, and, if you decided to get a safe-deposit-box, they would get a copy of that, too. Basically, whatever you consider private or secure, in a physical sense, would still be wide open to the government, no matter how much you wanted to keep it private or secret. Granted, this isn't a direct analogy, but it's close enough to try to get someone to understand the implications of the Clipper chip. -derek Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, G MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) Home page: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/warlord/home_page.html warlord@MIT.EDU PP-ASEL N1NWH PGP key available