Arms race
This is an arms race and ordinary people are badly outgunned. It *is* possible for someone like me (who can write the code) to make it very challenging to recover encrypted material, but it is almost mystically difficult to even generate good encryption keys. With sufficient determination, organizations like the NSA will likely be able to breach any barrier ordinary people can put in place.
What we need are laws that not only allow people to keep their privacy intact, but laws that punish people relentlessly attacking our rights. The real criminal elements are people pushing legislation to allow things like state surveillance and criminalization of modest civil breaches. Additionally, we need to make it so that things like data obtained by coercion or trickery is inadmissible in court. Most of that type of stuff is what I would consider 'fruit of the poison tree' and regardless of what is found that way, it should not have any legal standing.
Some electronically stored material, about plans or other ideas represent basically computer aided thought. They are a way to increase your power to form ideas and remember them so you can build upon them later. No entity besides yourself has any inherent right to inspect your thoughts. You should be at liberty to construct whatever fantasy or narrative you please.
Things change. What is an amusing artistic break from the mundane today could become a serious crime in the future.
We do, in fact, have a large variety of common-law rights which would adequately protect us if the newer laws contradicting them were struck down. Or if existing laws still in place were enforced.
People here seem to feel that coercing decryption keys is wrong. That is likely because they understand the subject area more than average. Somehow, someone with more grace and wit than myself needs to help people understand issues like these.
