Dear Mr. Vice President, I am glad to hear that the Administration is willing to back down on some of the highly unfavorable aspects of the Clipper Chip Proposal. I strongly support mandated encryption key escrow for all government employees, such as yourself, but none whatsoever on private individuals or private-sector companies. You all should be accountable to the public. Encryption key escrow of all government employees' keys would help allow the public to hold rogue government employees accountable for their inappropriate actions while in office and hold great power over the public. Get rid of the idea that would place mandatory key escrow on all private users of your encryption standard and, in my opinion, you will go down in history as the first person in government to actually help make this country *more* free and *more* open. I also support completely voluntary (i.e. no outside government coercion) encryption key escrow for all private individuals and private-sector companies, if they themselves so chose it. I cannot see why a private individual would ever want to have their encryption key in escrow, but the private-sector company could gain many benefits. As employee turn- over occurs (by death or disgruntlement), a company would be insured continued access to its information if it had an escrow plan in place. Until the, so called, National Security concerns that are often alluded to, yet never discussed, are bought fully to light on this matter, it is very hard for me to swallow the real need for key escrow for private citizens. Given the low number of legal wiretaps that are authorized each year, it just doesn't make sense to spend the kind of money key escrow would require to implement it on the wide scale you propose. I understand that the White House has already conducted one study on this issue of National Security as it relates to the key escrow issue. Why don't you release this study in full instead of starting another study? I also understand that you have held up the FOIA request to have this study released. Why? In a free society, it is just as important to discuss the National Security issue in the open as the citizen's privacy issue. I leave you with a quote that describes the situation fairly well for me: ``You can have my personal encryption key when you pry it from my cold, dead hands (and even then you can't have it because it has been memorized and my brain is now dead).'' Sincerely, Loren -- Loren J. Rittle (rittle@comm.mot.com) Ripem-1.2 MD5OfPublicKey: Systems Technology Research (IL02/2240) D2CE4A0F2BABF33AEF10C8C669DD782D Motorola, Inc. PGP-2.6 Key fingerprint: (708) 576-7794 6810D8AB3029874DD7065BC52067EAFD