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by 9rx 425 days ago
The question specifically asked which one(s) you are talking about, not about your dreams. Which high security value is the government not able to gain access to?

And, sure, if enough perfectly engineered vaults were impeding the government from carrying out the activities it wants to carry out, there would be calls to make building/using such a vault illegal too. In the real world, such vaults, if they exist at all, don't meaningfully get in the way. Thus there is no reason to think about it. We don't create laws on what theoretically might be a problem in some magical imagined world. We only create laws after something is identified as an actual problem.

1 comments

> The question specifically asked which one you are talking about, not about your dreams. Which one is like that?

After your five ninja edits, it's been hard to keep up:

Glass relocker mechanisms have existed (in reality) on safe doors for decades and will often result in the destruction of contents if triggered and opening is still required.

Governments are normally seeking evidence: a stack of cash or a quantity of bulk substances are substantially harder to rig to destroy (obviating evidence gathering) than documents or data.

> After your five ninja edits, it's been hard to keep up

No need to reply within the first second. Take your time.

In fact, consider taking a lot more time as you still haven't named the specific vault, or set of vaults, that is causing such a big problem for the government. If we don't know what vault it is, even if your description is vague, how would anyone come to think of it as a problem? Laws are not created by some all-knowing deity. It is just people.

That such a vault might be theoretically possible to build is irrelevant.

> as you still haven't named the specific vault

Vaults and safes are boutique products. Glass relockers have been sold for decades - can you not extrapolate that heat and impact might destroy something inside of a highly thermally-conductive container?

HSMs and similar tech have had tamper detection systems for decades with internal battery backups.. these aren't illegal yet. My server cases from 20 years ago had tamper switches for exactly this purpose. How hard is this stuff to engineer?

> Glass relockers have been sold for decades

And...?

Let me ask again: Which vault(s) are currently, or at least in recent enough memory for anyone to recall, causing great strife for the government? Even a rough location would be sufficient. We can offer that in the case of encryption. There are countless news articles about police not being able to decrypt data they deem important.

Without that, it doesn't matter. Laws are not created based on imagined situations that you can dream up. They only are created after something has become a problem. You can use a perfectly impenetrable vault all day long and as long as the government doesn't want in, it is never going to care.

Of course, the greater subject is really about houses, not vaults. The government has good reason to want to get into your house. For example, you might perish in it, and it needs to get in to deal with your mess. This is a relatively frequent task placed upon government to carry out. If you've made your house impenetrable, government isn't going to remain amused for long. If the government starts encountering that problem often, absolutely it would become illegal.

It is not illegal today because it has never posed a real problem.