re estimating wiretap costs benefits robin hanson hanson kronos arc nasa gov wrote would wiretap chip be cost effective summary compared to an average monthly phone bill of sixty dollars wiretaps are only worth two cents a month to police so the proposed wiretap chip must raise phone costs by less than one part in three thousand to be cost effective robin s calculation is interesting and important even if it s off by an order of magnitude for example even if hardware costs for the clipper chip phones were zero the protocol overhead in transmitting the escrow field would be much higher than the part in thousand it depends on the exact details of the phone call length protocol etc shorter calls get a proportionately greater hit however i suspect most americans will not find this line of reasoning as persuasive as the analogies about escrowing keys to one s house are tim may timothy c may crypto anarchy encryption digital money tcmay netcom com anonymous networks digital pseudonyms zero knowledge reputations information markets w a s t e aptos ca black markets collapse of governments higher power public key pgp and mailsafe available
