My impression was that the FBI and CIA etc has always been trying to ban encryption an similar, but has so far mostly failed. Strong encryption was illegal (from the Wikipedia page on PGP):
”in February 1993 Zimmermann [inventor of PGP encryption] became the formal target of a criminal investigation by the US Government for “munitions export without a license”. At the time, cryptosystems using keys larger than 40 bits were considered munitions within the definition of the US export regulations; PGP has never used keys smaller than 128 bits, so it qualified at that time.”
But this was later changed to allow strong encryption for the public. So while I share your worry, I take hope that the slippery slope is not inevitable.
My impression was that the FBI and CIA etc has always been trying to ban encryption an similar, but has so far mostly failed. Strong encryption was illegal (from the Wikipedia page on PGP):
”in February 1993 Zimmermann [inventor of PGP encryption] became the formal target of a criminal investigation by the US Government for “munitions export without a license”. At the time, cryptosystems using keys larger than 40 bits were considered munitions within the definition of the US export regulations; PGP has never used keys smaller than 128 bits, so it qualified at that time.”
But this was later changed to allow strong encryption for the public. So while I share your worry, I take hope that the slippery slope is not inevitable.
I’m reminded of https://xkcd.com/504/ (which was written before “crypto” meant “cryptocurrency”).