You&#x27;re talking like encryption is hardware. It&#x27;s software. You can confiscate eight billion copies but miss one and tomorrow there will be nine billion more.<p>And it doesn&#x27;t come from companies. Originally it comes from academics, but nobody actually gets their copy of AES from Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. It&#x27;s software on the internet. You can get it from Mozilla or Google. If you can&#x27;t get it from them then you can get it from anyone at CCC or Debian servers in France or Brazil or your cousin in Russia or the Venezuelan government that loves any excuse to stick it to the US.<p>But let&#x27;s pretend they&#x27;re willing to cut all the fiber and close all the borders to keep encryption from crossing in from other countries. Your proposal is that they&#x27;re going to go house to house and search your attic for the last of those t-shirts the EFF printed the last time this happened?<p>Now mind you, that doesn&#x27;t mean banning encryption would have no effect. It would mean that your bank and your doctor couldn&#x27;t use it to protect your finances and medical records, and they&#x27;re the type of organization that could be compelled to comply with such a thing.