[9rx]

> A warehouse with shutters and bulky padlocks, a night security guard and camera system is a crime?

No, why would it be? The security guard isn't going to wage war with the police/military when they want in. The guard will politely comply to any legitimate (and probably even illegitimate) request for access.

> A bank vault is a crime? Safety deposit boxes?

Banks are heavily regulated by the government. They especially aren't going to impede access if push comes to shove.

Laws aren't created on purely theoretical grounds. They are created only when a problem that needs to be solved is identified. The government has never had much trouble accessing physical spaces when they feel a need to. They have had trouble accessing encrypted data.

[pyfon]

Ok you make good points. Now for the doozy: is thinking (without transcribing for the government) illegal.

[9rx]

> is thinking (without transcribing for the government) illegal.

Thinking without a willingness to share what you thought with the government when it feels it needs to know (e.g. in court) is illegal. Full transcription is not always legally required, but it is in some specific contexts where there have been problems getting proper disclosure. Again, laws are created to deal with actual problems, not imagined problems.

I'll note that encryption isn't illegal today. While there are some outlier cases where it has been a challenge to government, it hasn't become a big enough problem to do anything about yet. But if it reaches the point where it is deemed sufficiently problematic, it will become illegal in some kind of fashion. What that looks like is obviously to be seen. It won't necessarily be a blanket ban on all encryption, or even a ban on encryption at all, but most people are not capable of imagining anything else, so here we are.