| The analogy is flawed, and the final sentence is condescending. All things in your list have an inherent physical danger. Neither encryption nor cryptography are themselves dangerous, they're a means of encoding some other thing which may or may not be dangerous into something whose danger cannot be determined. Imperfect analogy, but crypto is more like a safe than anything you list. An ensuing argument is, we need to regulate (crypto) safes not because they are themselves dangerous, but because their contents might be. The means of encryption-decryption, code, is considered free speech (Bernstein vs U.S. 9th Circuit, and Junger v Daley, 6th Circuit). Thus far crypto is itself protect, but the usage of crypto is an open question. With a real safe, police with probable cause can get a warrant, and forcibly gain access to the safe and see the contents. This isn't possible with crypto if the key owner refuses to cooperate, and why there's the ensuing problem of sanctioning the person for contempt of court when ordering access and they don't cooperate. The dispute has nothing to do with analogies though, it has to do with a power transfer. Crypto permits some transfer of power from the sovereign to the individual. And that has altered the social contract. It's done. And now after the fact we're trying to sort out the consequences of that power transfer, and whether or not the sovereign gets to reign it back in, and how. And that's unanswered. |