&gt; Surely an entity as large and as well financed and ISIS would have little trouble finding bright young engineers &amp; technologists sympathetic to their cause to simply build their own encrypted services?<p>You wouldn&#x27;t even need the brightest engineers. In fact so many encryption algorithms have been opened sourced and &#x2F; or in library form for so long that it&#x27;s easy for practically any developer to do.