If you encrypted something in 1999 with 56-bit key DES, you were using a cipher that at that time was not just controversial or considered weak by leading crypt

If you encrypted something in 1999 with 56-bit key DES, you were using a cipher that at that time was not just controversial or considered weak by leading cryptographers (that was already the case in 1977), but also practically demonstrated to be broken. If anything, the fact that brute-force still seems to be the most practical attack against DES shows that (symmetric) encryption lasts surprisingly long.