March 12, 2002
Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography
66
Opposition to Clipper
nOpposition to Clipper was widespread
nThe US Gov’t proposed it as the federal Escrowed Encryption Standard and rammed it through NIST into FIPS 185 in Feb ’94
nDuring the public comment period, 300 comments received, only 2 supported it
nNo one bought Clipper
nAT&T shut down its product line, offered leftover phones to employees to get rid of them
nOddly, the proposal probably did more to galvanize the strong-crypto community than anything else