"In 1991, alarmed at a future in which it would have to sort through an

endless fruit salad of encrypted bits, the FBI persuaded Senator Joseph

Biden to include certain language in Senate Bill 266. The new language

in the bill required electronic communications services and those who

created communications devices to implement only such encryption methods

as would assure government's ability to extract the plain text of any

voice or data communications in which it took a legal interest. It was

as if the government had responded to a technological leap in lock

design by requiring all building contractors to supply it with skeleton

keys to every door in America."

John Perry Barlow