All we need now is a piracy-style commercial to go along with the message: "You wouldn't encrypt a child you just abducted. You wouldn't encrypt potassium

All we need now is a piracy-style commercial to go along with the message: "You wouldn't encrypt a child you just abducted. You wouldn't encrypt potassium nitrate you plan to use to make a bomb and blow up a bulding. You wouldn't encrypt a stack of cash or a duffel bag of cocaine. So why would you encrypt information you wish to keep private?" The reality is that encrypted information may only be evidence of conspiracy, and even with 100% perfect encryption that the government is incapable of decrypting it's the equivalent of doing everything face to face, keeping the information in your head, and remaining silent under the Fifth Amendment. The government can't yet subpoena the contents of your thoughts against your will. Besides which, as soon as something criminal actually becomes criminal there's physical world, tangible evidence that cannot be encrypted -- the child, the explosive, the stacks of cash. And even if it's a purely digital crime, if there's sufficient suspicion of a crime, the government can get a warrant to install surveillance equipment to watch the device in question and watch the plaintext evidence.