Is anyone else distrubed by the way that encryption export policy and the clipper chip seem to be linked {in administration policy, and in the press? The letter from Gore to Cantwell certainly indicates this. He got her to refrain from trying to liberalize export by saying that he'd look into relaxing clipper. This seems awfully insidious, for a variety of reasons. I think everyone has got to make greater efforts to seperate these two issues in the public s mind. If we need to prevent encryption export for national security reasons, as the administration alleges, then that doesn't neccesarily have any relation on whether we need to adopt key escrow too.And if key escrow is neccesary for law enforcement, as they allege, that doesn't say _anything_ about whether encryption export should be liberalized or not. Of course, scrutinizing administration policy revelas the link without too much dificulty. They want to make clipper a de facto standard, and the only way they're going to be able to accomplish this is by refusing to allow exportation of anything _but_ clipper. But the administration isn't publically giving this line of reasoning, because it makes them look bad, and shows that they are mis-using the legislation that allows them to ban exportation of encryption for their own pro-Clipper strategies. But they still manage to link the two issues, as in the "compromise" with Ms. Cantwell, without giving any good reason for the two issues to be related! I don't think we should let them get away with this. If the two issues are going to be linked like this, we the public have got to demand and explanation or rational for doing this. Why did the administration basically offer to re-think clipper _if_ Cantwell didn't try to liberalize export? And when they can't give a good answer, we the cypherpunks have got to offer our explanation. As it is, they're getting a tactical olitical freebie. They've managed to link the issues of export restrictions and clipper such that Joe Public sees how the policies are linked, _without_ giving any actual reasons for the link, because those reasons would make them look so bad.