Clipper on CNN HN

[RYAN Alan Porter <ryan@rtfm.mlb.fl.us>]

The current CNN Headline News has a spot on the Clipper chip airing after
the Sports section, I just barely caught it by accident.  I have to leave
now to do some consulting, but I have my VCR set up to record it the next
time around.

Summary of the tape:

____BEGIN SUMMARY____

	The Clinton Administration is developing, along with the NSA and
the NIST a chip which will ensure private communications between
telephones and fax machines and such.  Current plans are for the keys to
be held in escrow by two seperate (unnamed) government agencies.
	Much was made about the objections made by people at the NIST
hearings about the questionable constitutionality of the chip and a direct
quote was aired by a woman saying during the hearings that 'the chip would
expand the powers of the government to invade the privacy of citizens to
even greater than what it already is' (paraphrase) and also about the
objections of companies who are afraid of being blackballed and prevented
from doing business unless they use the chip.  
	There was a small hint of a fear that the 'voluntary' status of
using the chip would not last for long.
	Also, AT&T (surprise) has apparantly announced that it is already
developing a system using the chip and showed a prototype on the air.  It
seemed to be a lot larger than necessary, a huge black box with a little
LCD display saying 'secure' and whatnot when you activated clipper security.
	There was an interview with a fed type who repeated all of the old
stale arguments about making conversations secure for him but not for the
criminals.

____END SUMMARY____

I think that the spot was definitely leaning toward exposing the
objections that people have toward the chip, even if the people at CNN
didn't really understand for sure what those objections are.

The whole thing might have been a little unclear for the average Joe as to
what the real problem is with this newfangled system, and I think that
more uninformed coverage like this is likely to turn people against us;
they may start to see us as the bad guys, a bunch of people who are
against privacy by our objection to this thing.

Anyway, now that it has hit CNN, it is officially mainstream and it may
well become a hot, trendy news item.  What we need now are hoardes of
people who will volunteer to be consulted with as 'experts' on the issue
for local news and such.


Gotta go now, gotta write some code...


Try to catch the spot.


-Ryan
the Bit Wallah