Comment by daveslash

Modern encryption is really just math. Cryptography in consumer and off-the-shelf products (which Barr is targeting with his discussion) theoretically _could_ be modified in such a way that the government could decrypt it. The two ways of which I can think are (1) Encryption "backdoors" -- fancy math known only to the government; this would require new encryption ciphers or (b) key escrow. Both approaches have their shortcomings and I'm against both, but it's plausible that the government might try it anyway. All that said, because encryption is just math, any individual or group could employ their own encryption by implementing one of any known existing ciphers -- one without a known "fancy math back door" and refuse to follow the "key escrow" guidelines. In these discussions about the government being able to decrypt stuff, are we, in effect, suggesting that certain math be made illegal? If that's really what's being proposed, I'd urge people to consider "Illegal Numbers" and how effective that's been. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number