I remember back in the before times when it was illegal to perform any sort of commercial activity on the internet, much like ham radio is today. Fast forward a few short decades and we have filthy rich internet oligarchs throttling their communication highways because it doesn’t comport with their politics. How times change.
Nor only was it illegal, it was dangerous if you wanted to send money or anything else of value through the ether.
We'll never know how close we came to letting the snoops in DC and elsewhere have access to our banking transactions, cash purchases and investments through a "back door" that the Clintoon goons insisted on back around '97-'98.
The tide changed when the creator of PGP was accused of a federal crime (exporting munitions, IIRC) and had to flee the country.
Had it not been for our new-found ability to encrypt Internet messages, later Web pages and content, we would still be in the stone age and Sears and Penney's would still be America's dominant merchandisers.