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The whole point is that in technology, there is no such thing as privacy/secrecy that's conditional on having a legally proper warrant.

Either the data or system is secure, or it isn't. Technologically, if there is a way for a judge to authorize reading a single X; then it is a hole that eventually will allow to read all X without the warrant by others as well.

As an example, if a cellphone network software allows for FBI wiretaps, then that can be used also by illegal wiretapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%... - the criminals weren't even identified). And if a system is secure (for any reasonable definition of the word secure), then noone can break that security, no matter what warrants they have.

There is no middle way. If I'm allowed to protect my communications from random illegal snoopers (say, corporate espionage); then that protection will be just as effective against legal snoopers.

If digital locks are treated as physical locks, a warrant would compel you to decrypt your files. If you refuse, that is obstruction of justice. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but I think there are few forms of commercially available encryption the government could not crack given time + resources, which a warrant would provide.

1) When properly used, commonly freely available encryption should be unbreakable even when given completely unreasonable resources (i.e., a Manhattan Project scale effort). Alternative methods (e.g. kidnapping&torture of everyone who might have access to keys and their relatives) would be far simpler and cheaper than actually bruteforcing proper cryptography.

2) There are freely available steganography/hidden volume tools that make it impossible to verify IF there is something encrypted - for example, you might guess that a hidden volume exists, the accused may decrypt N hidden volumes, but noone would be able to check if there is another N+1'st volume for which a key was not provided.

> But the technology the author is discussing generally has a design goal of preventing all searches, under any circumstances.

Well, the alternative is that the government has access to everything, all the time, and we just have to trust that they're not going to misuse it.

Also, your wording implies that if a government agency does have a valid warrant, that this means they're somehow entitled to whatever information they seek (within the parameters of said warrant). This is patently absurd to me. If the government seizes an encrypted document with a valid warrant, more power to 'em. Have fun brute-forcing it. Doesn't mean I owe them the passphrase.

Well yes, the whole point of the 4th amendment is so that we can "trust" (in the sense of feeling comfortable with) the government as a whole when it comes to searches because of the requirement for a warrant. In other words, the government has "access" in the technical sense of the word (the police can technically break into your house any time they want), but the requirement for a warrant is supposed to prevent them from misusing that access (they'll get in legal trouble if they break into your house without a warrant).

I wasn't suggesting entitlement so much as practicality. Up until recently, the distinction you're talking about didn't really exist. A warrant might not give police an "entitlement" to something in your house, but there wasn't really a lot you could do stop them from getting it. The best you could do is hide it which isn't very practical in a lot of situations.

But with an encrypted document, suddenly you have new protections. As you suggest, a warrant does the police no good because you also have the right (under the 5th amendment) not to tell them how to access it. Unlike a safe, forcing open an encrypted file might turn out to be impossible. Now you have a technical protection against searches that goes way beyond the legal one found in the 4th amendment.

Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I think it's an interesting way to look at it and at least one of the points I saw in the article. Technology is less a means to ensure 4th amendment rights and more a means to go beyond them...for both good and bad reasons.

I would think that this technology as described would bring it back to the choice of personal freedom... If authorities wanted/demanded access to my secure information, I have the option of refusing and being limited in my freedom (going to jail).

Now I, as a (hopefully) rational human being, have a choice again.

Yeah, I think constitutionally speaking there is implied a level of trust in the government and legal process — hence words like "reasonable." I thought that since trust doesn't seem to be an option any more, we have to go beyond what is guaranteed us by the constitution (to little effect in this case) and secure it by other means. That way the constitutional rights are not an ideal to be aimed for, but a ground floor at which to level out.

Sure, the us constitution is written that way, but other one that explicitly mention privacy (eg article 8 of the European convention on human rights