Industry Defies U.S. on Data Encryption. New York Times. The article is an account of a conference in Redwood City in which several of the major computer and telecommunications industrial leaders met and agreed to pursue products using the RSA encryption algorithm, rather than use the government-sponsored Clipper chip. The participants at this conference all agreed to use RSA in their encryption products. This is instead of using Clipper chips endorsed by the government.
Industry cites influence from the world's leading cryptographers and from civil liberty groups.
Markoff also cites the worries of those at the conference that the government will move to make Clipper mandatory. It is willing to compromise the strength of skipjack for the unequivocal protection that other algorithms provide. Clipper will have a hard time becoming ubiquitous and useful, moreover, if there are no manufacturs willing to produce devices which use escrowed encryption.