To innerstand the importance of privacy and encryption read A Cypherpunk's Manifesto by Eric Hughes.

"Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act.
The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm.
Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence.
Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible."

Eric Hughes, March 9, 1993