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Digression: The Politics of Encryption

Most of the governments of the world are very interested in encryption. Over the past 20 years, the USA government has proposed and/or mandated a variety of encryption laws to either restrict the use of strong encryption, or to force developers to provide a "back door" to their systems, which would allow officials to read encrypted data. In addition, for many years they have classified all forms of strong encryption as munitions, and restricted export of encryption products. It's only in the past year or so that restrictions on encryption exports have been eased/lifted.
 
Other governments (eg France, Malaysia, China, etc) have, at various times, simply banned the private use of strong encryption. In most cases, these policies have subsequently been reversed.
 
The problem for governments is that strong (ie, unbreakable) encryption can be used by criminals (or political enemies?) to communicate securely, so there is a an obvious vested interest in restricting it. On the other hand, strong encryption is absolutely necessary to enable Internet-based commerce (we see some applications later), so a government which restricts its use is limiting its people from participating in the new world of Internet-based business.
 


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