Ubiquity is another good defense against government, because government, especially oppressive government, must be made up of a minority due their relationship morally, financially, and psychically as leaches upon honest society. A majority of leaches would kill any host over time, so they generally maintain a minority, but with majority support through sophism, fear, division, loyalty, and other ways of subverting peace, justice and non-violence.
Ubiquity of citizens streaming camera feeds from anywhere, means official costumed brutality more often is captured on video and the evidence is out of any local oppressor’s reach to censor. Ubiquity of firearms means that the use of violence to overtake citizens must be done in smaller groups at a time, and to fewer people, and with some hyped excuse that will at least convince some portion of society.
Ubiquity of encryption could mean that most personal computers don’t contain much useful unencrypted data because, well of course, most people’s personal data is securely and privately stored. Any encrypted data there doesn’t belong to that person anyway, so why would that be even of interest to anyone? The new reality might be that the data just isn’t there, so what is there to do? I’m sure someone could be forced to give a password by court order, say, but would there be any proof of what “should” be in the account, that it was the right account? You might have a safe one to hand over in mind. Are they going to kill you for that, and then explain that to your wife? “He didn’t tell us a password, so we killed him,” probably won’t go over great with the voters. I’m speaking of the US government here as I am most familiar, but, here, politicians don’t really want to be seen as illegitimate thieves and murderers by too many of their citizens, and they spend a lot of time trying to paint a pretty picture of their activities, along with the media.
One question I had, is it currently the case in the US that people are made to divulge username and password details for their own accounts based on court orders? I know that the companies who hold account information are, but is the targeted person themselves ever ordered to divulge their passwords. Could a search warrant be targeted at “the password inside John Doe’s head corresponding to his maidsafe network account”, as opposed to only being able to obtain the physical computer?