Clinton’s Justice Department showed a brazen and bizarre lack of fairness toward Zimmermann. Until the statute of limitations expired—and that was fuzzy, even to lawyers—the Feds might just let him dangle. Without finding Zimmermann guilty of anything, or even charging him, Washington in a sense was already leveling penalties. He had to spend hours and hours away from his regular consulting business to work on his case. Total costs might reach $300,000 if the prosecutors decided to act. Even if lawyers donated their time—and Zimmermann might enjoy the services of some noted attorneys outraged by the threat to civil liberties—there would be the burden of telephone costs, travel, and hotels. Appeals for donations went up in such areas of the Usenet as talk.crypto.politics, comp.org.eff.talk, and, of course, alt.security.pgp. People could pay by credit card, encoding their numbers via PGP.[6.25] In the end, no matter what happened to Zimmermann, the real victory might be in the marketplace. And there Clipper was losing. AT&T and a chip maker named VLSI Technology came out with a chip that would challenge even the NSA’s supercomputer. Given a choice between that and Clipper, who’d want the latter? Even before then, in fact, few customers were going for Clipper-based equipment.[6.26] In the end it looked as if Washington would resort not to a chip but to continued pressure on U.S. corporations to make available the key schemes of more secure plans. And even then, I hoped, the industry would balk. The more such foolishness became a habit here, the less protected would be American companies abroad, as people outside the States followed Washington’s example. Some of the biggest Clipper haters, meanwhile, were overlooking their differences to unite against the tumor chip. Jim Bidzos’ company had already granted a license for the basic technology to ViaCrypt, which, at least in the latter’s opinion, left it free to sell a commercial version of PGP. And this past action may have been a door opener in a way for Phil Zimmermann. PGP was no longer so much of an outlaw program in the eyes of many, and businesses felt they could use it and get technical support. Beyond that, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whence much of the RSA technology had come, were sick of all the patent wars. They just wanted to see solid encryption in use. And Bidzos, however much he quarreled with Zimmermann, was himself determined that the Feds not control encryption. The compromise could go a long way toward enshrining RSA as at least an informal world standard, and thwarting RSA’s biggest competitor, the NSA.