Encryption and privacy of communication

The question of the privacy of communication between individuals is an old one. There have been numerous debates about the legality of wiretapping to intercept telephone conversations. The emergence of computer communication, such as email, adds a new twist to this. Messages transmitted using computers can be encrypted. Advances in encryption technologies make decryption by unauthorized parties virtually impossible. Current debate centers on whether such strong encryption schemes should be publicly available, and whether key escrow schemes in which some government body holds a key capable of decrypting all messages, should be mandated.