The wonderful thing about a free and open Internet developed by passionate participants is that they were anticipating not just having bad actors being criminals working outside the law. They anticipated states being the bad actors (which has proven to have been quite prescient, even in the case of "good" states like the US, Canada, UK, Australia, etc.); states with the ability to bribe or force participating network owners to allow unfettered access. And, they built the protocols to work, anyway.
Of course, this is also just a side effect of good security practices. If a state can break it, a well-connected criminal can, too. But, I'm pretty confident the creators of SSL were also thinking of China and North Korea and other violently oppressive regimes.
Of course, this is also just a side effect of good security practices. If a state can break it, a well-connected criminal can, too. But, I'm pretty confident the creators of SSL were also thinking of China and North Korea and other violently oppressive regimes.