we didn't know it went back that far then.

Who "we?" There was this export control back then, mandatory weak crypto, the Clipper chip initiative etc. If you wanted to say "a lot of people didn't care" well they don't care now too. Snowden raised the level of awareness for a moment, that's true...

Here's one article from 1995 about the process against Phil Zimmerman, the original author of PGP:

http://virtualschool.edu/mon/Crypto/LostInKafkaTerritory

Edit: The Clipper Chip, 1993:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip