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.
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind