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The Clipper Papers


Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has obtained hundreds of pages of government documents concerning the Clipper Chip and encryption. Many documents were withheld by the originating agencies, and those released are heavily sanitized. Scanned images of many of these documents are available. The links below are to full-text versions of the released material. EPIC thanks Charles Smith for creating these text files.


Top Secret FBI memo titled "Use of the Clipper Chip in AT&T TSD 3600 During Phase II of Production" (12/23/92)

Secret briefing document titled "Clipper Encryption - AT&T Telephone Security Device Model 3600" (2/9/93)

Top Secret briefing document titled, "Encryption: The Threat, Applications, and Potential Solutions" (2/19/93)

Secret NSA memo concerning the appointment of "Outside Crypto-mathematicians to Examine CLIPPER" (1/20/93)


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