&gt; What they&#x27;re worried about is 15 years from now, where all communications and storage technology is end-to-end encrypted ...<p>Encryption is basically a branch of mathematics. Outlawing all mathematics that can be used for the purpose of encryption, requires to accurately describe the precise boundaries of this branch of mathematics. It is trivially easy to prove that this cannot be done:<p>You cannot construct a predicate function that accepts as argument another function and returns true&#x2F;false if the argument is an encryption function, because it means that this function implicitly claims to be able to determine if such function will halt. The theorem of the halting problem precludes that a predicate function could exist that returns true&#x2F;false if the function supplied as argument will always halts. Therefore, no function could ever be constructed that can generally determine if another function is an encryption function.<p>This means that encryption cannot be defined. Without definition, it is not possible to outlaw it.<p>&gt; no warrant or judicial order of any sort can retrieve evidence from them ...<p>Warrants and judicial orders are just verbiage while encryption algorithms are machine-executable instructions. It is simply not enough to mumble verbiage. They will also have to speak in terms of machine-executable instructions, in order to overcome the encryption measures that they are facing.<p>Why would it be necessary to preserve the power of people who are only capable of mumbling non-executable verbiage? If their jobs have become obsolete due to progress in technology, they will not be the first nor the last ones that this happens to. Join the club.