Cryptography is the science of encoding a message into a form that is unreadable and making sure only the proper people are capable of decoding the message back into its original form. This is usually done by using an encryption algorithm and a decryption algorithm (these two are often the same) and very often a secret key. Some of the early cryptographic systems did not use a key but instead kept the algorithm itself secret. …showed first 75 words of 3121 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3121 total…countries already have knowledge of them, and there are many foreign business companies which use strong cryptography (including the RSA algorithm). So prohibiting exportation of these materials is purely and simply useless. Furthermore, prohibiting US companies from being able to export strong cryptography results in loss of marketing opportunities for them. It also means that they won't be able to conduct safe, private conversations when dealing with foreign companies because they cannot use encrypted communications.