For the first time in history, everyone - Third World freedom fighters to urban drug dealers - can communicate in secrecy via unbreakable codes made available by advances in cryptography and computer technology. As the welcome and unwelcome consequences of this new technology begin to dawn on governments worldwide, responses have varied from stringent regulation to laissez faire liberalism. Written by a former General Counsel of the National Security Agency and an expert in cryptography law, this text explores the policy and legal issues raised by the democratization of cryptography and offers a guide to the ways in which the law of cryptography translates issues of trust into standards for lawful conduct.