Re: WIRETAP: boycotts

[szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)]

Agreed, not much economic pressure would come from directly boycotting 
Clipper phones, or for that matter from people boycotting AT&T for 
ideological reasons.  Rather, it would come from AT&T getting a reputation
as putting the U.S. government's needs before the needs of their customers;
and not caring very much about the privacy of their customers' phone
calls.  What international business, law firm, etc. wants to trust
their communications to a company that puts NSA wiretap chips in their 
phones and touts them as "secure"?  A good outcome here is for this fiasco 
to get wide publicity, and for Sprint, MCI, etc. to subtly use doubts about 
AT&T's concern for privacy in their ad campaigns.

A recent cypherpunks post refferred to a conversation with an AT&T
marketing type, who kept insisting that AT&T is very concerned about
customer privacy, it's a high priority, etc.  AT&T knows they need a 
good reputation for privacy.  Keep up the pressure!

Nick Szabo					szabo@techbook.com