Missing the first basic step
Before demanding that someone hands over a password or decryption key for an "encrypted" message, it should be incumbent on law-enforcement to prove that the message is indeed encrypted,
A block of random data looks identical to an encrypted message. Yet it cannot be decoded (or cracked) since it contains no information. ( Undergraduate philosophy course question: How do you know when you have successfully decoded a message?)
So if you were to generate (say) 1MB of random data and send it to someone, could you then be required on pain of punishment to provide the means to decrypt it - even though the authorities have not demonstrated that there is anything to decrypt.
Similarly, entering certain autocratic countries with a TB or two of random numbers on a lappy could lead to the grammatical howler - and possibly recursive statement - of "I'm going to need you to decode that" from someone in a peaked hat. Explaining that there is nothing to decode and therefore no pass-key is unlikely to get you past the government checkpoint.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
