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The first half I disagree with: if a law is passed, circumvention tools won’t help. This is what it seems like you have been arguing for up till now, and frankly not getting traction.

However, the second part (about the fait accompli) is a very important point.

You’d have to achieve widespread usage among the general population for this to be effective to be effective.

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I don't see how you could disagree on the first point though. Not only is is often done today to varying degrees of success depending on country and technology, it was exactly how much of consumer crypto got its start back in the earlier days of the internet. During the 90's technologies like RSA, PGP and others basically got built and released while constantly treading all over extremely shaky legal ground. It was their widespread usefulness and steadily growing adoption by users that allowed them to in effect circumvent archaic laws until they were simply recognized as legally usable.

I am well of the history.

Treading shaky legal ground is not the same as circumvention.

This time around, if encryption is banned, they will do more than just hound Phil Zimmerman for years on end.

They’ll come after the end users, and ‘circumvention’ won’t help.

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