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Concept
History
The Crypto Wars
First appeared Jan 1991
Why it matters
The cypherpunks formed to win this fight. The conviction that individuals must be able to run cryptography the state can't break is the political DNA Bitcoin inherited.
What it is
The 1990s political fight over whether civilians could use strong cryptography — featuring export controls that treated crypto as a munition, the proposed Clipper chip backdoor, and the criminal investigation of Phil Zimmermann over PGP.