I mean, amateur radio was illegal to encrypt. That encryption ban could have theoretically also happened to the internet with just a few changes in legislation in a different timeline.
If, say the US and rest of North America, and the European Countries, along with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, basically if most of the democratic world somehow in an alternate timeline just went batshit crazy and become authoritarian. What would the internet even look like. Would the internet even exist?
I mean, the US was supposedly a liberal democracy tried to ban PGP. A full fledged authoritarian US would’ve imprisoned many of those PGP and Free Software authors. HTTPS would’ve have a government root certificate on every computer, phone, tablet, smartwatch. Signal would’ve been illegal…
Is this alt-timeline too far fetched?
I mean its not even too late for this to happen starting like right now 2025, right?
Amateur radio is still illegal to encrypt (with some exceptions for controlling satelites), because private communication isn’t the point of amateur radio.
Besides, (in most countries) there are some topics that are illegal to talk over amateur radio about, mainly stuff like politics and religion. You’re also not allowed to offer telecommunication services (i.e. pass messages on for others). Enforcing those sorts of laws would be impossible with encryption.
But to answer your question: I think we probably wouldn’t have had an internet. Authoritarian regimes thrive on stability and maintaining the status quo, I think someone high up would have quickly decided that developing that sort of tech is too risky.
An Internet without privacy and encryption sounds awful. But one where it’s illegal to talk about politics and religion sounds pretty tempting at times…