It&#x27;s been a <i>cold</i> civil war for many years. Encryption - and communication technology in general - is a power usable by anybody, not just established institutions.<p>As Dan Geer explains:<p><pre><code>    In other words, [c]onvergence is an inevitable consequence of the
    very power of cyberspace in and of itself. [I]ncreasingly powerful,
    location independent technology in the hands of the many will tend
    to force changes in the distribution of power.  In fact, that is
    the central theme of this essay -- that the power that is growing
    in the net, per se, will soon surpass the ability of our existing
    institutions to modify it in any meaningful way, so either the net
    must be broken up into governable chunks or the net becomes government.
    
    It seems to me that the leverage here favors cyberspace whenever
    and wherever we give cyberspace a monopoly position, which we are
    doing that blindly and often.  In the last couple of years, I&#x27;ve
    found that institutions that I more or less must use [...] no longer
    accept paper letter instructions, they each only accept digital
    delivery of such instructions.  This means that each of them has
    created a critical dependence on an Internet swarming with men in
    the middle and, which is more, they have doubtlessly given up their
    own ability to fall back to what worked for a century before.

    It is that giving up of alternative means that really defines what
    convergence is and does.  It is said that all civil wars are about
    on whose terms re-unification will occur.  I would argue that we
    are in, to coin a phrase, a Cold Civil War to determine on whose
    terms convergence occurs. 

</code></pre>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=2824" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=2824</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;geer.tinho.net&#x2F;geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;geer.tinho.net&#x2F;geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt</a> (section &quot;10. Convergence&quot;)