
I don't find this a credible argument, for two reasons.  One you have
supplied below: unless I care about entering the USA at any time in the
future (eg. the Taiwanese backyard cloners - who BTW have been known to
decap custom silicon and reproduce it on daughterboards when pirating
high-profit arcade machines and the like - who wouldn't care less), I am not 
going to care much about US confidentiality, am I?  Only people like the
real me, who does care about travelling to various countries for business
reasons, will sit up and follow laws like this, but I would contend that
we're not the main threat.

I also have grave doubts whether an algorythm widely distributed in silicon
could possibly be called "classified."  It's like handing out military
secrets to the whole world in envelopes marked "don't open me."  I can
imagine several credible defences which could be employed if it came to
a trial.  One would be the stupidity of the government's actions.


Amusing thought: could they have employed an algorythm which is infeasable
for a fast software implementation, but which is easy in custom hardware?
In DES, the extensive use of permutation tables (trivial in hardware: you
just swap bus lines), but relatively slow in software have had a big effect
on the speed difference between hardware and software implementations of
that cipher (indeed, I suspect that Lucifer's designers were well aware that
it would be, and approved.)  Certain algorythms (usually parallel search
algorythms) can be very slow in software, yet can fly in custom hardware.
I have no proof of their employment in Clipper -- it is pure conjecture.  
However, as a software implementation of this cipher is something that its 
designers would have been trying to avoid at all costs, then the inclusion 
of such techniques seems credible.

Hmmm... I also wonder what Intergraph thinks about the use of the name
"Clipper" for this device. :)
