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The real crisis was not that public-key cryptography existed. The crisis was that it escaped. Once strong cryptography could be described in public, implemented in software, and distributed through academic and commercial channels, the state was no longer deciding by itself who got modern secrecy. That is what triggered the government panic era.
SKIPJACK was not the same thing as Clipper. It was the engine inside Clipper. That distinction matters because the real controversy of the era was never only about one cipher. It was about whether strong encryption would remain acceptable to the government only if the government kept a built-in path back in.
NSA-approved encryption has never meant just one thing. At different times it has meant federally standardized encryption, export-licensed commercial encryption, escrow-enabled government access, and high-assurance algorithms approved for national security systems. This entry explains why those meanings kept colliding with privacy.
Capstone was not just another cryptographic chip. It was the broader NSA-backed hardware platform that connected Clipper, Fortezza, Skipjack, key escrow, export policy, and the government’s 1990s attempt to reconcile strong encryption with guaranteed lawful access.
The Clipper chip was the most famous public face of the U.S. government’s 1990s key-escrow policy. This entry traces how an NSA-designed encryption device became the center of a national fight over privacy, surveillance, technical trust, export controls, and the future of secure communications.