Originally Posted by Jimmie76
Go for PGP if you want to stop almost everyone being able to read your mail. I was told by someone I trust, that the USG had only relaxed the encryption export laws when they had managed to figure a way of breaking most stuff easily. Although I wouldn't take this as fact, I don't see much reason to doubt it, I believe in theory that it could be done, using/compromising the OS on which the encryption software runs.
No. They relaxed the laws once it became clear that the proverbial cat was out of the bag, it was perfectly legal to export crypto code in printed (book form) and it became increasingly clear that the circuit court would have smacked them around in
Zimermmann had it continued.
It's possible that the government made some breakthru in factoring or the underlying traditional crypto in PGP. It's far easier to simply tempest your machine or keylog it to figure your passphrase, though.