Because, as I mentioned before but I don't think people understood the significance, Bill Gates is attempting to create a worldwide network of about a hundred satellites. You don't get to do that without political assistance, and no way is the USG going to let Bill put those birds up unless they control the technology to snoop on the entire net.
This is a relatively inane conspiracy theory. Gates hardly requires any assistance since the feds were already committed to setting up licenses in bands that are good for these types of networks. Both the FCC and Hughes have sped up their efforts towards these systems in recent days. And the satellite system is not Bill Gates. He is an investor, and a fairly small one. Gates and McCaw (sp?) gave that venture much more by attaching their names to it than they did by giving a few of their millions. I seem to recall Gates' share being 7 megabucks.
Putting SKE in all microsoft products is doubtless one (though unlikely all) of the quid pro quos of getting a licence to put up the sky-based comms network.
Jesus people are paranoid. I happen to be of the opinion that A) if escrow isn't bult into things by the time Chicago, Cairo and Daytona are out it will be too late and that B) software based escrows are a good thing because they take the wind out of hardware based encryption efforts and they are difficult to make mandatory. JWS