Jackboots on the Infobahn: Clipper is a Last-Ditch Attempt By the United States, the Last Great Power From the Old Industrial Era, to Establish Imperial Control Over Cyberspace

The administration made it clear that cryptography would become their very own “Bosnia of telecommunications” (as one staffer put it) … rather than ditching Clipper, they declared it a Federal Data Processing Standard … And they outlined a very porous set of requirements under which the cops might get the keys to your chip.

Jackboots on the Infobahn: Clipper is a Last-Ditch Attempt By the United States, the Last Great Power From the Old Industrial Era, to Establish Imperial Control Over Cyberspace

“This is going to be our Bay of Pigs.” Trusting the government with your privacy is like having a Peeping Tom install your window blinds.

Jackboots on the Infobahn: Clipper is a Last-Ditch Attempt By the United States, the Last Great Power From the Old Industrial Era, to Establish Imperial Control Over Cyberspace

The Clipper Chip … threatens to be either the goofiest waste of federal dollars since President Gerald Ford’s great Swine Flu program or, if actually deployed, a surveillance technology of profound malignancy.

Read Hundt: Wired Asks the Chair of the FCC About Cutting Cable Rates and Competition, Censoring Howard Stern, and John Malone’s Suggestion That He Be Taken Out and Shot

The information superhighway right now consists of our universal broadcast system, our almost-universal telephone system, our almost-universal cable system, our universal satellite system, and our virtually universal wireless system … All five will intersect, interconnect, overlap. And we will end up with a network of these networks.

Read Hundt: Wired Asks the Chair of the FCC About Cutting Cable Rates and Competition, Censoring Howard Stern, and John Malone’s Suggestion That He Be Taken Out and Shot

It is absolutely essential that the information highway be connected to every classroom and every clinic and every library in the country as soon as practical. Being on the information highway is the only way to participate fully in our economy. It is going to be essential for virtually all Americans. I want us to have a policy of connecting all classrooms for the beginning of any installation of broadband interactive services.

Read Hundt: Wired Asks the Chair of the FCC About Cutting Cable Rates and Competition, Censoring Howard Stern, and John Malone’s Suggestion That He Be Taken Out and Shot

Competition should drive all markets, especially the building-out of the info-highway. I don’t believe government should build the information highway, and I don’t believe a monopolist should be given the exclusive license to build the information highway. But there are three principles to this competition: choice, opportunity, and fairness.

Persistence of Locality

Until now, each successive generation in the 20th century has spread its time and energy among larger and larger numbers of people … It is possible, against all expectations, that the Net will reverse this trend, allowing us to spend more and more time with a smaller and smaller number of people. If so, local cultures might in time reemerge from the world monoculture.

Persistence of Locality

I read about a software developer who has six continuous teleconferencing sessions running all day, every day, in windows scattered around the margins of his terminal … Eventually bandwidth will get cheap enough to allow almost all Net users to do something like this, and if they do, my experience suggests it will be longtime, local friends who will end up on their displays.