Communications intelligence throughout history has served a useful purpose for national security, for example in World War II with the cracking of Germany's codes. The final goal is marketability. With the Clipper Chip there is a government market, but the question arises whether the private sector will want it. Some people object that it uses a classified algorithm, it is not open to public scrutiny, or that the government holds the keys. There is also concern that other countries would not be interested in the Clipper Chip.
Many efforts are underway to investigate other apporaches to key escrow cryptography.
The government has established an industry-government working group to look at alternative approaches to key escrow, and an international key escrow group started meeting this summer. New approaches based on software and on unclassified algorithms have been proposed. Some look promising. Several approaches provide commercial or coporate key escrow services that could meet the needs of corporations. I represent leading publishers of software for personal computers including Lotus Development, Microsoft, Novell, and Apple.