I don&#x27;t think non-proliferation would be a good idea for encryption technology:<p>1. Depriving the the public of decent encryption does a lot of harm. If you let some people in through the backdoor you&#x27;re going to let bad people in too.<p>This is different from nuclear bombs. It doesn&#x27;t harm the public to deprive them of nuclear weapons. I like having my financial information encrypted, but I don&#x27;t want a personal nuclear bomb.<p>2. Non-proliferation of encryption wouldn&#x27;t work. The algorithms and ideas are already widespread. Every university teaches it. Millions of computers have the code already. The code and ideas can be proliferated anonymously, instantly, undetectably and cheaply.<p>This is different from nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs are much more complex and expensive to transport, manufacture and hide.<p>(I haven&#x27;t mentioned AK47s, but I&#x27;d say they fall somewhere between between encryption and nuclear bombs in benefit vs harm to the public and in ease vs difficulty of non-proliferation, which is why there are more of them around than there are nuclear bombs.)