Not like today. Today every single person carries a surveillance device and gps tracker on their person at all times. The fact that you can send messages that are encrypted isn't any different than the fact that two people could whisper fifty years ago. The government still knows everything you are up to, we can just hide a bit of data.

People were way more free when I was a kid than they are today. Encryption wasn't necessary for 99% of people. To the extent it was necessary, people had one time pads and shit like that. Today I'm concerned whether I'll be allowed to vote after facial recognition cameras catch me wearing a pride shirt.

I had no need of encryption before the internet. Because no one does those things. The government doesn't have the resources to walk into everyone's houses, even if I weren't protected by the 4th amendment.

It's only with the advent of the internet and mass surveillance that I have any need of encryption. If I needed to speak privately with someone, I'd visit them. Or even just pick up a phone because wiretaps require a warrant.

It was not needed by anyone other than governments. Mass surveillance was not possible, and you could correspond about criminal activities over the phone and through the mail and unless you were already under criminal investigation, no one could ever know.

The enigma machine is over 80 years old now. That was just the last machine before modern computing. There were all sorts of other machines and techniques for cryptography long before the modern era. The first forms of encryption are over 3500 years old.

well of course they existed. But I can't think of an example of a pre-internet era where forms of encryption of a grade high enough to stop law enforcement, and probably all/most government can read them, was easy and accessible enough that your average highschooler would without thinking about it encrypt a grocery list he's sending to his mom.

So easy a child could use it... or the current secretary of war (with some minor mistakes of adding in reporters into rooms etc...).

The enigma machine was for government use for a military purpose. Common people had no need of anything like that. If I somehow implied I thought encryption was invented for the internet, let me clarify that: I don't.

It seems like folks are under the mistaken belief I thought encryption was something that post-dated the internet. I don't see what I might've said to give that impression, but that is not the case.