It's just occurred to me - say that all the petitions against clipper are ignored, clipper becomes mandatory, and other methods of encryption are outlawed, and clipper gets a user base of several million. One well-placed explosive device that destroys even one of the two escrow databases, and suddenly the government has supplied us with secure encryption that even they can't break. Of course, that is assuming that the government didn't lie and make extra backup copies (just for safety's sake, you understand, against just such a threat) that are kept somewhere out of public scrutiny, so that wiretaps can be made on a large scale without alarming people monitoring the access of the "official" database. Say all this happens. Maybe the government will even be the one to rig the explosion. Suddenly people lose all their reservations about using Clipper products. The government decides to give up escrowing keys (officially). But they can still listen in everywhere, and people won't be guarded. That first paragraph is also assuming that they didn't build in a back door to the encryption system. But then essentially the same scenario would apply. -- Joel Mueller - <Insert your favorite witty quote here; I'm tired.> GAT/O -d+(---) -p+ c++@ l+ u++ e m+ s+/- n- h-- f+@ g+(-) w+ t(--) ry? PGP 2.3a Public Key : finger jmueller@gac.edu or on keyservers. 0C6D75 01 0E 16 A7 29 C4 48 75 54 CD 99 09 88 88 3C 39