At 15:27 6/5/94 +0100, Ed Carp [SysAdmin] wrote:

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the government's position on Clipper. After all, the best way for people to ensure that the government's not going to listen in on their communications is to not use Clipper. Now, unless it was a crime to use anything other than Clipper, the government couldn't do a thing about it.

I think that NSA, FBI & CIA hope that Clipper will become a de facto standard resulting from its being required for certain kinds of interactions with government agencies. If this were to happen non-clipper products would have a more difficult time attaining a critical mass. The real purpose of Clipper can thus be stated as an attempt to prevent the success of some de facto standard that the government could not tap. I recall hearing someone from NSA say something very much like this. ...