However, the fear of terrorist attack is the source of their power. Clearly, legislation or executive orders designed to limit the use of encryption technology within the United States are not only futile, but also a clear indication to the terrorist groups that they are accomplishing their goal. In their eyes, a few casualties in their ranks are a small price to pay for bringing their grievances to the attention of the world. Apparently, a few lives in the United States are a price that we are no longer willing to pay in order to protect the very freedoms that make us free. Our leaders have lost their nerve to stand up to fear-obsessed politicians by refusing to compromise American civil liberties in the face of terrorist attacks.
Free societies pay a high social cost for maintaining free speech and other individual liberties.
Without these freedoms, American society would be no different from any other autocratic regime. Thus, I believe that a generation of politicians have come to power, and they have determined that they are endowed with a responsibility to protect our national security interests at a high cost, including the slow and steady cost to our individual constitutionally-protected freedoms. As Professor Moglen has pointed out, these public servants are more concerned about the Internet being used by nuclear terrorists and pedophiles than about any other issue facing the development of the law as it pertains to the Internet. In addition, encryption controls have been imposed and later dropped. Mostly importantly, the conventional wisdom seems to be unanimous in Washington, D.C. that no legislation is needed to protect average citizens from being monitored online by the government.