Its important to realize what was really gained by this revelation- - some PR value - several months before fixed Clipper/Tessara chips become available I have no doubts that the problem that was revealed will be corrected. I'm not sure it was a good idea to reveal the weakness. Imagine how much worse it would be (in terms of PR) if lots of phones had been deployed before the flaw was found? On the other hand, it's possible the weakness was known and would have been (is being) corrected quietly. So, there is a small window in which to take advantage of the PR, and the delay in revised chip availablility. Unless there are some major defections in Congressional support because of this, I don't think much will change; Clipper will become a reality. A competing product could devastate it- yes, government subsidies & requirements might form the nucleus of support, but having to deal with NSA restrictions and sole sourcing of the chip makes it a real, expensive pain to turn it into a product. I don't think the revision will be completely trivial, either. The way these chips are built means a much more extensive verification process must be used- not just reburning a PROM. A standard micro and a standard encryption chip on the side (don't have the references here, but at HotChips there will be a paper on a 100kbit/sec Single Chip Modular Exponentiation Processor from Holger Orup of Aarhus Univ. Denmark) could make a viable, competing product. Note that I'm not volunteering or suggesting that one of you should go out and implement my great idea- just making predictions. ************************************************** * Allen J. Baum tel. (408)974-3385 * * Apple Computer, MS/305-3B * * 1 Infinite Loop * * Cupertino, CA 95014 baum@apple.com * **************************************************