The richest, strongest, most electronically-vulnerable nation on earth persists in a policy that effectively restricts the use of encryption technology domestically as well as abroad. Even while the security of transactions over telephone and computer networks has become a source of wide public concern, the US government continues to work against the proliferation of unbreakable cryptography (and thus perfectly concealable communications).
In this talk we present a brief history of wiretap law and privacy rulings in the United States, and we put current crypto policy in the context of decisions made over the last twenty years.