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For most of the era of electronic communication, encryption the technique
of protecting communications by scrambling them was largely a government
preserve. Before modern electronics, encryption was too expensive for
widespread business use. Most development was secret, carried out by the
government, and reserved for government use. Cryptography was treated as a
weapon under the export-control laws. Encryption systems could not be
exported for commercial purposes, even to close allies and trading
partners.
During the 1980s and 1990s, cryptography emerged from its former obscurity
and became an important aspect of commercial communications. The rise of
the personal computer and the Internet changed encryption from an exotic
military-only technology to one critical for Internet commerce. Despite
this, governments, especially that of the U.S., were slow to accept the new
reality. Industry efforts to develop and use cryptography were thwarted by
export-control regulations, which emerged as the dominant government
influence on the development and deployment of encryption technology. By
the late 1990s, the U.S. government, which had made repeated attempts to
continue its domination of the field, held a stance that was barely tenable
in the rest of the world. Influences varying from the rise of open-source
software to European indignation at evidence the U.S. was spying on their
communications came together to force a change.
The new regulations distinguish government customers from commercial ones
and retail from customized technology. As a result, cryptography can now
be exported with minimal government interference for most commercial and
many government applications, to all countries except those regarded as
supporters of terrorism.
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