>If a company that say, committed crimes, financial or criminal, has a warrant served on them, what if the response is, "Hey, we'd love to give you our emails, but all employees use end to end encryption, and every desktop has unbreakable filesystem crypto, and our IT department can't unlock anything, so you must compel the users to hand over keys?"
Are you an American or Foreign? In the American constitution, the 5th amendment, legally protects a party from being forced to incriminate one self. So if you are still alive, and slapped with a warrant, your rights protect you from giving up your private key.
I'm aware of the 5th amendment, but prosecutors have worked around it and journalists have gone to jail to protect sources. http://www.rcfp.org/jailed-journalists
Consider the various ways to police crime:
1: Before the fact, preemptively. Active surveillance and-or entrapment. Widely criticized.
2. After the fact, forensic analysis. Previously, physical evidence collected, warrants for documents. In digital realm, foiled by cryptography. Attempts by government to restore status quo to pre-digital capabilities widely criticized.
3. Compulsion. Prosecutors lean hard on individuals with digital evidence to turn over materials. Runs afoul of 5th amendment and civil libertarians.
At least for many types of crime, especially white collar crime, this leaves the authorities almost no recourse. Your politicians can communicate securely with their paymasters, and receive untraceable payments over bitcoin. Although you may find HUMINT witnesses who can give you probable cause, there may be no way to obtain real evidence.
The Silk Road founder was only caught because of active surveillance, literally caught him with his computer unlocked. This would be like waiting for the San Bernardino killers to unlock their iPhone, and them seizing it before the auto-timer relocked the screen. Not exactly possible for all types of crimes.
Is active physical surveillance of suspects by the state any less creepy than digital warrants?
Are you an American or Foreign? In the American constitution, the 5th amendment, legally protects a party from being forced to incriminate one self. So if you are still alive, and slapped with a warrant, your rights protect you from giving up your private key.