You joke, but until the year 2000, open-source asymmetric encryption such as TLS was export-controlled as a munition under ITAR in the United States. Apparentl

You joke, but until the year 2000, open-source asymmetric encryption such as TLS was export-controlled as a munition under ITAR in the United States. Apparently the government didn't see much of a problem with that classification until online merchants started wanting to encrypt credit card transactions in the mid-'90s, and the ball was slowly rolled uphill from there.