I thought there were also some U.S. privacy laws around library records, but can't locate a clear reference just now.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
That's actually a pretty solid win for privacy, although it doesn't alleviate my sense that the government stance is "we can read everything as long as we don't tell anyone about it". The last I heard about library records was the Patriot Act opening them to government investigation, but things may have changed since them.
Still, this one is news to me, I appreciate it.
I almost called out the crypto wars specifically, because they were a political win caused by technical means (just too hard to control exports) and enabling technical progress (didn't regulate surveillance, but made privacy securable).
To the extent that anyone has actually come to the table on this stuff, it's been as a result of technical change forcing their hand. I wouldn't be surprised if widespread encryption-by-default changes the terms of the debate and opens the door to more transparency from governments who want some degree of cooperation.
That's the popular tale. It was partial. Lots of stuff, including high-assurance systems and custom, stayed under old classification. Such export uncertainty was a consideration in the cancellation of A1-class, VAX, Security Kernel. Here's excerpts and links from a write-up I did on it after I dug into the actual export laws:
Still like some help from professionals to confirm or reject my analysis. People dealing with export on Schneier's blog gave feedback indicating they never ran into trouble. Yet, they might have been under the mass-market classification. So, I don't know if the other one is enforced or under what circumstances.
I frequently see pieces criticizing over-reliance on crypto as solutionism and political apathy, but I don't understand what they expect. The people fighting for strong cryptography have also led the political fight for privacy, but their nontechnical efforts have been ignored or circumvented at every turn. At this point it's hard to imagine what a strong, trustworthy political advance would even look like.