In the Signal Foundation president’s talk “AI, Encryption, and the Sins of the 90s” at NDSS 2024, a controversial claim is made that the legacy of the crypto wars trading privacy for encryption ushered in an age of mass corporate surveillance. This surprising assertion suggests that export controls on strong cryptography in the 1990s prevented the metastatic growth of SSL-protected commerce and RSA-protected corporate databases. However, the evidence provided, including the rapid growth of Amazon and historical data on surveillance practices, raises questions about the validity of these claims, challenging the narrative of the talk and prompting further investigation into the complexities of encryption regulation.
https://blog.cr.yp.to/20241028-surveillance.html