Oh, I absolutely agree. This is somewhat closer to what I'm trying to invoke here, but it's slightly different, and requires a different approach to engage the average American citizen in the conversation.

I think getting people involved in understanding this aspect of the case is critically important, as this is the part of the case that would be precedent-setting and [I believe rightly] concerns Apple and others with the requisite technical background. The danger is this precedent could be extended in untold tangential ways outside the realm of preventing device-wiping after n failed password attempts.

The trouble here, to me, is a majority of the average citizen who wonders what the All Writs Act is aren't going to bother finding out. They'll just accept the government's position that it allows them to ask for what they're asking. A smaller minority of those same citizens might go look up the All Writs Act, are probably not going to understand what it means. "What's a writ?" Hmmm. "What's "an alternative writ or rule nisi"?" I don't even understand what this means, much less how it applies. Oh well." Average people aren't going to become armchair legal (or encryption) experts overnight to resolve in their head where they stand on this issue. Thus, they're probably going to choose the path of least mental resistance, which will look something like, "Well, it is a terrorist's phone ... and I'm not a terrorist, so this probably doesn't actually affect me in any way ..."

Anyway, I think you're definitely on the right track with this part of the order, and the specific law invoked. We just have to get that into simpler terms an average American can understand, minus the expert/legal/technical jargon, and then get them to understand the implications. Your questions and phrasing are pretty good starters, I think. I can imagine, with perhaps a wording change or two for personal taste, I could ask a non-lawyer, non-technologist that question and they'd react with something like, "Why the hell should the government be able to force me to create something that doesn't exist so they can conduct an investigation?"

And that's exactly where we want people to be on this part of the issue at hand.

It's an interesting case because the people who are most worried about terrorists tend to be the people who are also most concerned with the government expanding power, especially by reinterpreting old laws. It needs to be clear that this is about expanding government powers to force people to work for them because so far the War on Terror has been a way to get past the opposition to expanding powers in most cases. But there has to be a line at some point where people think that it's been taken too far, no matter how scared of terrorists people might be. This idea of forced work might be that line.