Rethinking Encryption
This is fundamentally a fight about the autonomy of the human mind, and what the government can command you to do with your own brain.<p>If you and a cohort were the last survivors of a dying tribe, with your own special language that no one understood, and you criminally conspired with them via written word, the government could not compel you to translate your messages just because they cannot understand them. That's the 5th Amendment in action, as you'd be creating testimony against yourself. The prosecution will have to pin you on some other charge, maybe a crime that you actually physically committed.<p>It's the same exact thing with encryption. It's a language that the government cannot understand, and cannot compel you to translate.<p>Now, to be fair, there is some wishy-washy here because the government desires not only to have compelled decryption, but to force companies to wiretap their own users. The later is not strictly a 5th Amendment violation - but it's the principle of the matter.<p>One day we'll have the ability to interface directly with our minds, and we need to draw the "stay the fuck out" line pretty damned clearly in the sand before that happens.