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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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