What has been the impact of export controls on cryptography?
Due to deep-seated Cold War fears, encryption is highly regulated by the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce, which refuse to license any secure encryption product for export unless it utilizes key recovery, a law enforcement code word for the ability to easily decrypt information by third-parties not originally intended to receive the message. The results have been debilitating for the software industry and networked communications. Since computer networks like the Internet are international in scope, strong encryption cannot be widely deployed in new software products to secure passwords and privatize messages, leaving them virtually unprotected from those who would gain unauthorized access or make unauthorized copies. Export controls have also greatly hampered groundbreaking work in the field of cryptography, preventing myriad academic cryptographers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and electrical engineers in this country and abroad, from developing the security that an eve
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