As the author stated, encryption was export controlled for a long time. The legal fight was very intense. If I recall any encryption stronger than 40 bits needed a license to export outside of the USA until about 2000 or so.

Yeah, I remember that being a thing in browsers. It was kind of odd to download a browser with 128-bit encryption that forbade me to distributing it to anyone outside of the USA.

Pretty sure this isn't accurate. I thought the government dropped their lawsuit against PGP in the 90s.

U.S. non-military exports are controlled by Export Administration Regulations (EAR), a short name for the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 15 chapter VII, subchapter C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

From your own link "The export of cryptographic technology and devices from the United States was severely restricted by U.S. law until 1992, but was gradually eased until 2000;"

The software was capable of strong encryption it was restricted by being paid for.

Yeah, my brain said "18 years ago? Yeah, that was the nineties" and I didn't realize it was 2000, although the shareware version might have been developed much earlier.

Also the lawsuit was against Phil Zimmermann himself, not PGP.