This is an AP news release on the industry rumblings we've been hearing about. Novell, AT&T, Citicorp, Hughes Aircraft, Motorola? European Community? British Ministry of Defense? ye gads! (Does GCHQ know about this? Maybe they're not into jumping off bridges like their friend NSA.) [anonymous `White House' Clipper sympathizer]

``I think this won't drive us crazy,'' the official said. ``We'll look at this and evaluate it on its technical merits.''

hee, hee. Sounds like a hardware engineer in a competing cryptography company. These people simultaneously reside in the U.S. government and Fantasy Land. (Don't you just love that `we're giving this thorough evaluation' phrase? with Clipper it was `hm, what can we actually get away with?' here it's a euphemism for `what the hell are we going to do?') The 64k question of course: what's the CCC algorithm? p.s. if anyone could pass on the Markoff NYT article on the same please post it. ===cut=here=== Group To Set Rules For Computer Encoding< NEW YORK (AP) _ Novell Inc., the leader in network software for corporate computer systems, is set to reveal plans for protecting information stored in computers or transmitted over networks, according to a published report. Novell, leading an international industry group, was to make the announcement in New York on Wednesday, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The announcement was seen as an indirect challenge to the Clinton Administration's effort to impose a national encoding standard for computer and telephone communications, the newspaper said. The other companies involved are AT&T, Computer Associates, Citicorp, Hughes Aircraft, Motorola and smaller firms specializing in data security. Representatives from the European Community standard setting committee and the British Ministry of Defense were also to participate in the announcement. Computer and communications companies, as well as corporate users of information technology, are worried about the government's plan, which would enable it to use wiretaps with a court's authorization, the newspaper said. But an unidentified White House official told the Times that the administration could live with the move. ``I think this won't drive us crazy,'' the official said. ``We'll look at this and evaluate it on its technical merits.'' The government can influence the use of communications encoding standards by controlling what types of hardware and software that companies can export, but it has no legal means of imposing its own standard or of blocking the development of an industry standard.