With all due respect I sense that you might be neglecting the big picture. Unjust laws, slopped out illegal orders and an extreme activist court are all in play.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the US willing to go to jail (or worse) for their beliefs. It’s kind of the founding mythology of the nation.
US history is full of people who successfully challenged violations of their rights and government overreach. Success isn’t guaranteed, sure. It never is. But cowering in fear because the tyrants might put you behind bars is downright un-American.
But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.
Successful civil rights activism took place in an environment where people were being arrested, beaten, and even killed for standing up for what is right. You could even argue that this created fertile ground for the success of the movement. Failures of justice create hardened activists and support networks, and eventually public support.
Going to the courts instead of the legislature is another strategy that often wins. This is how Bernstein ended export restrictions on cryptography, by suing the government on constitutional grounds rather than trying to persuade legislators.
2. Openly thumbing your nose at the law is not going to serve you well in court. What did Prof. Bernstein do when he was threatened with legal sanctions? He lawyered up and took his counsel's advice. His communications throughout the process remained factual and respectful even though his disagreement was clear. He did not go onto Hacker News and prejudice himself by saying things like "Illinois legislators can eat shit" and "I dare someone to try to take me to court over this." He was patient, let his lawyers do the talking, and did not get the judge pissed off at him.
Civil disobedience, as with the legislative and judicial processes, works through the power of persuasion. If you fail to persuade, your mission fails.
These processes involve emotional and imperfect people, not deterministic logical machines, and success ultimately requires making them happy (or at least not making enemies out of them). The system might not work, but you have to work the system.
I am an active FOSS maintainer who wishes to protect the privacy, security, and sovereignty of users of community owned operating systems. My goal is to signal to them that we find these types of laws so completely ridiculous and unenforceable, that they should worry less about maintainers injecting state malware into their operating systems. Also it is to signal to other maintainers they will not be alone in resisting this.
With those goals in mind I am happy to tell any legislators pushing this sort of thing, to eat shit.
Neither is Prof. Bernstein. The observation is not oriented to lawyers or politicians; it is oriented towards how to succeed when judges and politicians make the rules.
And, since you seem to be making assumptions about what people you know nothing about could or could not hypothetically handle, maybe look a bit closer at my history. I have survived WAY harder shit than sitting in an air conditioned box with 3 squares a day for doing what I thought was right, so even if the threat of jail was credible, it would not deter me.
It is the bluster of people that think I even could be jailed for something like this that I am most amused by.
Truly it is fascinating and a bit sad how much fear there is in this thread over upsetting some state level officials.