If you talk about the actions of specific agencies, such as the FCC, DEA, NSA, etc, you will see that much of their motivation comes from bureaucratic turf wars. Seeing 'Government' as your great enemy is a damaging misnomer.
Indeed, many government policies can be understood only from this perspective. Clipper is a perfect example. Key escrow exists only because the NSA doesn't want to risk blame if some terrorist or drug dealer were to use an unescrowed NSA-produced algorithm. The fact that a terrorist or drug dealer can easily go elsewhere and obtain other strong or stronger algorithms without key escrow is irrelevant. The NSA simply doesn't care as long as *they* can't be blamed for whatever happens. Classic CYA, nothing more. A similar analysis applies to the export control regulations regarding cryptography. Phil