AFAIK there is nothing stopping you from encrypting arbitrary amounts of data directly using asymmetric algorithms like RSA. The scheme you describe is implemen

AFAIK there is nothing stopping you from encrypting arbitrary amounts of data directly using asymmetric algorithms like RSA. The scheme you describe is implemented because asymmetric crypto is dead-slow compared to symmetric crypto, so the amount of data to be encrypted using an asymmetric algorithm is kept to a minimum by just encrypting a random symmetric key, which is then used to encrypt large amounts of data with a fast symmetric algorithm. Since the data that was encrypted in this case is inherently tiny (social security numbers etc.), I'd think it would be a good idea to directly encrypt this with an asymmetric algorithm, thereby reducing the complexity of the entire mechanism, which is generally beneficial for security as well as maintainability. But I'm wondering as well about the reasons for choosing an asymmetric algorithm in the first place. Typically, symmetric algorithms are used for such cases in which the entity that encrypts something is the same entity that needs to be able to decrypt it later. It's not that this could not be implemented as well using asymmetric crypto, but it somehow defies the whole point of the asymmetry.