Why the government can’t actually stop terrorists from using encryption - The Washington Post

A timely encryption reality check; also see Why Are We Fighting the Crypto Wars Again? (Steven Levy on Medium Backchannel)

"That's because so many encrypted products are made by developers working in foreign countries or as part of open source projects, putting them outside the federal government's reach. For example, instant messaging service Telegram — which offers users encrypted "secret chats" — is headquartered in Germany while encrypted voice call and text-messaging service Silent Phone is based out of Switzerland. And Signal, a popular app for encrypted voice calls and text messaging, is open source.

"Trying to put a mandate on encryption software is really pretty hopeless," said Matt Blaze, a computer science professor and cryptography researcher at the University of Pennsylvania."

Why the government can’t actually stop terrorists from using encryption - The Washington Post