Libraries and library systems are a major, long-term target of the security services and politicians. Those guys want to know if you read "Steal This Book", or in an older age, "Lady Chatterly's Lover", so they can blackmail you. The library community soon learned that it was smart to meet the most stringent privacy standards set by law. After all, you also can't afford to cheese off Germany and the EU and get tossed out of their market.

Countries who would prefer to have back-doors have a hard time making a case for them, as they don't want be seen publicly trying to convince a company to break a good law.

The same logic applied to all software: China has just encouraged all countries to demand open or at least auditable source, and builds that can be proven to be from those sources, so customers can be sure that the backdoors aren't in.

Smart customers will insists on open source, so they can check themselves.

Chip and pin has been broken in Europe since soon after it was introduced: see https://www.lightbluetouchpape...

The US is looking at chip-and-signature, which is safer for the customer , who go screwed by UK banks claiming that chip and pin was perfect, therefor any losses were the customer's fault.

Courtesy of Ross Anderson, one of the serious researchers in the sucurity world.

My libertarian friend Max and I dealt with CSE in the early 1980s, before the election of Mr. Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives. They were a small group, very interested in the security of PC-class machines (this was the 286 era), and especially of machines sold to External Affairs and other customers who might be the subject of spying by foreign intelligence services.

At the time, TEMPEST was a huge concern, and they helped Max measure the emissions from his machines, and advised us on many other confidentiality concerns. This was understandable: we built ruggedized machines that External Affairs used in embassies around the world!

Looking at what they were concerned about, it was pretty obvious at that time that they didn't think we were living in a panopticon: the big bugbear was insiders, and they wanted to see the Orange Book used everywhere (:-))

Therefor: the rot started no earlier than Mr Mulroney's election in 1984, and probably much later. The budget is probably the best indicator. It was small and static until 2001, then doubled and redoubled in Mr Harper's era, from 2006 onwards.