THE ANTI-CLIPper

["Gary Jeffers" <CCGARY@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>]

   An excerpt from the THE SPOTLIGHT newspaper April 11, 1994 from
its TECHNOLOGY & LIBERTY column.

 "TV THAT WATCHES YOU"

   "In a little-noticed agreement reported in Washington Technology Week
 Bell Atlantic, General Instruments Corporation, & the National
 Institute of Science & Technology(NIST) have agree to build Clipper
 chips into future General Instruments cable-TV boxes."

    "It's a landmark agreement, & the mainstream media has been
 virtually silent on the subject. But what does the agreement mean?"

   "For starters, it means your high-tech cable box of the future will
have all the "privacy protection" of your Clinton Clipper telephone. It
is designed to snitch on you."

   "For example, you'll soon be able to order merchandise through your
high-tech cable TV. And the Clipper chip implanted in your cable box wil
flag every purchase as yours. Maybe you contribute to church causes? Use
your cable box for tithes & it could be "profiled". Do you watch pay-
per-view movies? Big Brother could soon be critiquing your viewing
habits."

   "Starting to get the picture? The Clipper chip is designed to auto-
matically identify every cable TV transaction you make. It can report
your favorite programs & films. It can mark your buying habits."

   "And since Clipper's actual capabilities are still top-secret, it
could theoretically be even more sinister. It could even contain logic
to encrypt signals from monitoring equipment built into your cable box,
such as a miniature video camera or infrared sensor (like the cameras
& sensors already built into experimental cable boxes used by the
Arbitron & Nielson rating services to monitor who is in the room with
the TV on)."

   "General Instruments Corporation (GI) has a near-monopoly on the
production of home cable-TV receivers. As a result, the "quiet"
Clipper agreement virtually assures that Clipper chips will be insin-
uated into the cable boxes of almost 90% of American's cable sub-
scribers, all of whom have GI's cable equipment." This looks like
really bad news to me!

    Maybe the free market could help? How about "CLIPPER FREE"
labels on small companies cable_TV receivers. If the company could
get away with it, it might really help their sales. Maybe foreign
companies could come in with Clipper-frees? They could scream trade-
war if the feds tried to stop them. American companies could then
claim unfair restrictions were keeping them from being competitive.

   An even better possibility presents itself! How about the poss-
ibility of a pirate cottage industry in disabling Clipper chips. Would
the TV work with a broken Clipper. How about jumping around the Clipper
chip? If that doesn't work, then an anti-clipper chip that goes
in parallel or in series with the Clipper or replaces it? I don't
know much about electronics. There has been for years a small in-
dustry in producing "pirate" cable boxes. Imagine the possibilities
with the anti-chip business. Electronic hackers working their way
though college by installing off-shore produced anti-Clipper chips.
Also individuals making a living from this or a good moonlighting
job. If the feds outlaw this - THEN EVEN BETTER! An off the books,
non-taxed business employing skilled technical people & habituating
the population to engaging in federally unlawful activities!

   I predict that in coming years, the productive general population
is going to become boldly contemptful of the big state. In this
atmosphere, anti-Clipper activity will be well received & popularly
endorsed. We will see a booming underground electronic privacy
industry.

   What would the new chip's name be? THE ANTI-CLIPper? THE FREEDOM
CHIP? THE WACO? THE WEAVER FAMILY? THE ANARCHIST CHIP?
THE EQUALIZER CHIP? THE CYPHERPUNK CHIP? THE PRIVACY CHIP?
THE YOU'LL-MIND-YOUR-OWN-DAM'D-BUSINESS CHIP? THE NEUROMANCER CHIP?
THE ANTI-STATE CHIP? THE REVOLT CHIP? THE CLIP CLIPPER CHIP?
THE NO-FEDS CHIP? THE CLIPPER CLIPPER CHIP?

                                           Yours Truly,
                                           Gary Jeffers


                           PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK!
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