The Illogic of Clipper

[Norman Hardy]

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. 
...