9.3.1. What is Clipper? - government holds the skeleton keys - analogies to other systems 9.3.2. Why do most Cypherpunks oppose Clipper? - fear of restrictions on crypto, derailing so many wonderful possibilities 9.3.3. Why does Clipper rate its own section? - The announcement of the "Escrowed Encryption Standard," EES, on April 16, 1993, was a galvanizing event for Cypherpunks and for a large segment of the U. S. population. The EES was announced originally as "Clipper," despite the use of the name Clipper by two major products (the Intergraph CPU and a dBase software tool), and the government backed off on the name. Too late, though, as the name "Clipper" had become indelibly linked to this whole proposal. 9.3.4. "Is stopping Clipper the main goal of Cypherpunks?" - It certainly seems so at times, as Clipper has dominated the topics since the Clipper announcement in April, 1993. + it has become so, with monkeywrenching efforts in several areas - lobbying and education against it (though informal, such lobbying has been successful...look at NYT article) - "Big Brother Inside" and t-shirts - technical monkeywrenching (Matt Blaze...hesitate to claim any credit, but he has been on our list, attended a meeting, etc.) - Although it may seem so, Clipper is just one aspect...step...initiative. - Developing new software tools, writing code, deploying remailers and digital cash are long-range projects of great importance. - The Clipper key escrow proposal came along (4-93) at an opportune time for Cypherpunks and became a major focus. Emergency meetings, analyses, etc.
Next Page: 9.4 Crypto Policy Issues
Previous Page: 9.2 SUMMARY: Policy: Clipper,Key Escrow, and Digital Telephony
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind