Privacy on the Line

In the spring of 1993, the White House announced an unprecedented plan for both promoting and

controlling the use of secret codes to keep communications private. The plan, formally called key

escrow but popularly known as "Clipper" after its star component, the Clipper chip, was to adopt a

new federal standard for encryption, a standard that would ensure that the government could always

read encrypted messages if it chose.



The Clipper proposal was met by a storm of protest. It was criticized by some as an outrageous

violation of civil liberties, by some because the standard could only be implemented in hardware, and

by still others on a wide variety of grounds. Despite the opposition, Clipper seemed, in a sense, to

have won. After a mandatory public comment period, which produced two letters in favor and 300

against, the standard was adopted. In a more fundamental sense, however, the Clipper program

seemed to have lost. Aside from the 9000 telephone security devices that the FBI purchased in an

attempt to seed the market, very little Clipper-based equipment has been built.



The Clipper debate proved to be the opening engagement in an ongoing battle about the right to use

encryption. Having tried to use its buying power and standards-making authority to impose key

escrow, the government turned to the only other non-legislative tool available: export control.



The United States has approximately 5% of the world's population. In light of this, it is not surprising

that, although the country's share of the world economy is way out of proportion to its population,

most major US corporations sell more than half their products in other countries. This makes the

larger part of their markets subject to export-control laws.