> This has been going on for decades. Indeed - your younger readers may not know that up until October 1996, the US Government considered encryption systems using a key length greater than 40 bits "munitions" and barred their export. Ironically, this meant that DVDs could only be "protected" using 40bit encryption, which by 1999 a desktop PC could be crack within a day. Further reading: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/encryption/encryption.htm http://epic.org/crypto/export_controls/interim_regs_12_96.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States#PC_era