the Crypto Wars
lorecryptographyprivacygovernance & risk
The 1990s battle over whether strong cryptography could be exported, escrowed, or used freely at all.
The US government classed strong crypto as a munition, proposed the key-escrowed Clipper chip in 1993, and investigated Phil Zimmermann for years after PGP escaped onto the Internet; activists answered by printing source code in books, which the First Amendment protects. Export rules were largely relaxed by 2000, and the browsers' padlock is the peace dividend. Every modern proposal for lawful-access backdoors reopens the same trench lines.
Also known as: Clipper chip, export controls