Cryptography: Past, Present and Future

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 onesand retail from customized technology. As a result, cryptography can nowbe exported with minimal government interference for most commercial and many government applications, to all countries except those regarded as supporters of terrorism.