Also, the development of clipper was done with tax dollars. The government has no need to recoup its investment in developing the chip. Therefore, they can sell the chips at the cost of manufacturing, and forget the R&D. That ability to ignore the bottom line is a pretty powerful mechanism. If a clipper phone costs $100 less than the alternative, because we the taxpayers already paid for it, Clipper becomes more and more the only choice.
Well, then. Maybe it's time to develop our own PGP chip. Would the PGP routines fit in a large PGA? What's the smallest, cheapest alternative we can come up with? If we give away the PGA code freely, that would help reduce the cost of inclusion in a commercial product. An FPGA would give the user the ability to change keys with little trouble. Upgrading is as easy as swapping a prom. (Better yet have an onboard programmer.) Even then, I would guess that a lot of people would have to pay a bit more for secure communications. I think it's worth it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.