A brief history of US encryption policy

The FBI’s recent attempt to force Apple to unlock the iPhone of Syed Farook brought the battle over encryption directly to the pockets of many Americans. For perhaps the first time, encryption was a topic for dinner table discussion. Though widely believed to be a new battle, a brief survey of the history of encryption regulation shows that law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and technologists have been struggling over encryption backdoors since the early 1990s.