The whole goal of the hijacking of the phrase "key escrow" to camoflage GAK was to obscure the difference between voluntary and involuntary participation. Unfortunately, while Clipper and successors have been policy failures, that initial push to conquer important conceptual ground has been a devastating success. Now good guys from both sides of the PGP CAP debate appear to have forgotten this essential distinction. Jon, I started reading your list of ways that PGP CAP differs from USG GAK, and it was about "software versus hardware" or something. Screw that-- is it voluntary or is it not? Of course it is voluntary. PGP, Inc. has no deal with USG or any other agency to the effect that user's secrets will be involuntarily (by threat, force or secrecy) copied. So forget about all those details and make the point-- PGP helps people control their own data, including voluntarily sharing their data with others. This is almost entirely unrelated to GAK. One more time for the slow folks at home (journalists especially, listen up!): Escrow is when you voluntarily choose to share your property with someone else, especially as part of a business contract that you have with that person to the effect that she won't use your property for anything but will merely hold your property in order to give it back to you or to a third party in response to certain events transpiring. The word "escrow", coined sometime in the 16th or early 17th centuries, has held this meaning and only this meaning throughout the intervening centuries. Someone getting access to your secrets against your will, whether by trickery, threat of force, or burglary is not escrow. At least, not until the USG deliberately chose to abuse that word to throw a mask of legitimacy upon its rotten idea of mandatory wiretapping for all digital communication. Damn, but it is frustrating to see such a bare-faced newspeak gambit succeed so brilliantly against otherwise literate people. Everyone should read George Orwell's paper on (ab)use of language in politics. None of the examples he cites are nearly as worthy of Minitru as is this single conceptual hijacking. Regards, Zooko P.S. Of course there are subtleties that I omitted from this rant. It wouldn't be a good rant if I calmly enumerated the various legitimate perspectives now would it? Maybe PGP CAP is a bad idea. Maybe it will lead to GAK. Maybe corporations are a bad idea. Maybe they will lead to governments. But whether or no, use of PGP and PGP features (including escrow features) is voluntary. GAK is not voluntary. GAK is not escrow. Please help me put a stake through the heart of this vile meme.