There are still a few of us who remember the “crypto wars” of the 80s and 90s, when the US Federal Government was doing its best to keep useful cryptography from the general public. One of the proposals was “key escrow,” where copies of cryptographic keys would be held by the Government (the purported reasons varied, the solution remained the same.)
In the end, the fact that the USA couldn’t keep the rest of the world from discovering mathematics – especially when the maths in question actually originated outside of the USA to begin with – put an end to the authoritarian push for key escrow.
Then 9/11 and a whole new excuse came along, the Powers that Be got a little less heavy-handed, and the public got more complacent.
And here we are.
