I get the one time pad size argument (as well as the analog that a shorter key is therefore a hashing function in some respect?). The thing I found curious tho

I get the one time pad size argument (as well as the analog that a shorter key is therefore a hashing function in some respect?). The thing I found curious though is that the legal argument seems to depend not on providing your encryption key (which is generally assumed to be protected), but the act of decryption. In the absence of the key, any plaintext produced from a ciphertext is... questionable?