...he is right wing even by the standards of pre 9/11 US politics at least...
You are misremembering. Before 9/11, domestic spying and the warfare state was primarily part of the left wing platform. Bush was elected on a platform of "humble foreign policy" (as compared to Clinton/Gore's interventionism) and Republicans generally opposed domestic spying.
Only a few years before 9/11, it was paranoid gun toting right wing conspiracy theorists who defended crypto and turing machines, opposed the first patriot act (pushed by Biden and Clinton), and generally opposed the government.
(They dropped this opposition the minute Bush was elected, of course...)
Back in the 90's there was a movement in congress to lock down all computers iPhone style - i.e., ordinary users should not have access to Turing machines. The Clipper Chip was one of the early attempts at this.
The goal was to prevent piracy, encryption, child pornography, violent video games, and all the other bad things that the internet was enabling.
You are misremembering. Before 9/11, domestic spying and the warfare state was primarily part of the left wing platform. Bush was elected on a platform of "humble foreign policy" (as compared to Clinton/Gore's interventionism) and Republicans generally opposed domestic spying.
Only a few years before 9/11, it was paranoid gun toting right wing conspiracy theorists who defended crypto and turing machines, opposed the first patriot act (pushed by Biden and Clinton), and generally opposed the government.
(They dropped this opposition the minute Bush was elected, of course...)