From: Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl <rrothenb@ic.sunysb.edu>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 20:35:08 PST
To: jltocher@CCGATE.HAC.COM
Subject: Re: Clipper Revived?
In-Reply-To: <9501017916.AA791667001@CCGATE.HAC.COM>
Message-ID: <199502020434.XAA04359@libws2.ic.sunysb.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
>      From Edupage:
>      
>      REPLACEMENT FOR CLIPPER
>      AT&T and VLSI Technology Inc. will collaborate to develop microchips 
>      that use a triple-strength version of DES (data encryption standard), 
>      which previously had been rejected by the National Security Agency. 
>      VLSI is the designated contractor to make the government-favored 
>      Clipper chips, but this latest announcement reveals their doubts over 
>      whether there's a market for the Clipper. "These companies have 
>      basically made the determination that Clipper is dead and there's 
>      going to be the proliferation of encryption anyway, so they might as 
>      well take advantage of it," says one observer, who predicts the market 
>      for such technology "could reach hundreds of millions" of dollars in 
>      annual sales by the end of the decade. (Wall Street Journal 1/31/95 
>      A3)

So, the question is, are these chips escrowed like Clipper (ie, are they
abandoning the standard because the phones are awful)? Or are they abandon-
ing the escrowed encryption altogether?