Boycotts seldom do much by direct economic pressure. If they accomplish anything, they generally do so by the publicity they generate. Phil
Agreed, not much economic pressure would come from directly boycotting Clipper phones, or for that matter from people boycotting AT&T for ideological reasons. Rather, it would come from AT&T getting a reputation as putting the U.S. government's needs before the needs of their customers; and not caring very much about the privacy of their customers' phone calls. What international business, law firm, etc. wants to trust their communications to a company that puts NSA wiretap chips in their phones and touts them as "secure"? A good outcome here is for this fiasco to get wide publicity, and for Sprint, MCI, etc. to subtly use doubts about AT&T's concern for privacy in their ad campaigns. A recent cypherpunks post refferred to a conversation with an AT&T marketing type, who kept insisting that AT&T is very concerned about customer privacy, it's a high priority, etc. AT&T knows they need a good reputation for privacy. Keep up the pressure! Nick Szabo szabo@techbook.com
participants (2)
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karn@qualcomm.com
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szabo@techbook.com