1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

are already out of date. As John Perry Barlow said in a different context (copyright law) at a February 1996 forum in Amsterdam: "Any time you have large numbers of people scoffing systematically at the law, it's usually the law that changes."[26]

There seems to be no chance that even all the world's governments put together will be able to stop the use of non-escrowed encryption entirely, even if they can get the public to agree to the rules they want to pass. The programs and algorithms are too widely available, and there are too many competent people who can and do put them to use. The consensus on the Net is strongly in favor of access to strong encryption. In any event, you could escrow one key for mundane Net-based transactions like buying groceries and use a different system for private email, or hide vital data using a technique called steganography, which essentially buries the real data in the background noise of a picture or sound file. That won't help legitimate businesses, who are the least able to afford to deliberately flout the law-- although they are also in the best position to lobby for changes. Non-legitimate businesses, who might be the most dangerous potential users of the Net, are hardly likely to balk at a spot of illegal encryption. The bottom line is that the people who will be most readily controlled by restricting access to encryption are the ones we least need to control.