Australian tech companies need to release a program called UltraDecrypt that simply brute-force decrypts any message on their platforms given billions of years and sell it for $10M per license.
Then when law enforcement claims they are not being cooperative, they can say they have a tool that meets their needs if they're patient.
You'd probably be charged with something and punished.
Courts don't take to kindly to people trying to be cute with their demands. It's not like they are going to say "well they are technically right" and give up, they are going to just up the consequences or clarify the request until you comply in the way that everyone knows they want you to.
This. The biggest weakness to encryption systems isn't the math, it's the guy in the uniform who has tied you to a chair and keeps strapping your feet with a rubber hose.
Well don't be too excited about it, because laws like the one this article is about makes that kind of response impossible (as in you WILL be thrown in jail for the rest of your life if you attempt to do that).
And even in the US it still isn't a sure thing that Lavabit's response would work again if someone else tried it. I don't know the details, but I believe there is still some uncertainty around if the FBI just kind of "allowed" them to close down by not pursuing it any further, or if they got what they needed, or of secret laws were changed because of this instance.
In Lavabit's case, there was a lot of FBI involvement, a lot of secret court orders and gag orders, and a lot of accusations from the owner of Lavabit that he was brought to secret courts without legal representation and no chance to appeal, and even he says that there are things he still can't talk about.
A colleague and I published a related idea [1] last year: Weaken the encryption just enough so that a government can (barely) afford to do the brute force if they really do care about it that much. (Hint: They almost certainly don't.)
Please note that we're not seriously suggesting that encryption providers should adopt this -- not as long as there are other options. But if you're legally obligated to do something, this is the "f*ck off and leave me alone" approach to compliance.
I've often thought a good solution would be zero-knowledge weak encryption with an additional strong encryption layered on top. When the government comes to ask for data you decrypt with the strong key, but then they still have to do the work to break the weak key.
Thinking like an economist, you want to align the incentives to make it possible but not free to access user data. A weak key (per user) that's breakable with $10k compute cost seems about right to me, but the actual optimal cost may be higher or lower.
Then when law enforcement claims they are not being cooperative, they can say they have a tool that meets their needs if they're patient.