-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I found this on comp.dcom.telecom and have elided some marketing material. My editorial comments are enclosed in brackets. Amazing. _AT&T_, the same folks that were trying to bring us Clipper, are going to sell DES over-the-counter. I'd be happier with triple-DES, but this blows my tiny little mind. Disclaimer: I'm speaking for myself, not AT&T. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. For the most part, corporations exist to make money. They don't take moral stances. (Aside: I'm not saying that this is good or bad; rather, I'm saying that it just is.) If you offer a company a way to make money, it will probably do it. Unified visions, of the sort you're implying AT&T had on encryption, are generally seen as long-term ways to make money, i.e., if the company picks some standard, it will be easier or cheaper to make or sell some future set of products. In the case of Clipper, there was a clear market: the government wanted to buy Clipperphones. AT&T already sells secure phones (STU-III's) to the government; the question here (and I wasn't privy to any of the discussions) was whether or not it would cost more to develop the phone than the potential profits. But Clipper isn't, and can't be, the be-all for encryption, even apart from the moral questions. See if you can dig up AT&T's response to the proposed key escrow FIPS. I suspect you'd be surprised. I don't think I have it handy, but it points out things like the unsuitability of key escrow for software implementations -- and the products you describe are exactly that. Yes, AT&T as a company thinks that there is a market for privacy devices. (And it's no secret that the defense market is drying up, due to budget cuts.) Clipper can't fill certain market niches. DES -- or triple DES, or IDEA, or RC2, or whatever -- can.