alt Hacker News> For example, almost no one had the ability to protect their communication and personal files from warrants when the laws regarding that sort of thing were written...
Pardon? We know that encryption was used at least as far back as the days of Julius Caesar. [0] Clever kids and adults have almost certainly been making their own ciphers since the invention of written language, and their own conlangs since the invention of verbal language.
I expect that -in the US- one could not be compelled to provide the decryption methods for one's papers and journals to the cops back in the 1700s just like cannot be compelled to provide one's passphrase to decrypt one's encrypted data today. Both are really obviously testimony, which cannot be legally compelled. [1]
[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher>
[1] ...abuse of contempt of court charges notwithstanding...
Maybe you skipped over the "almost no one" aspect of that section you quoted. I didn’t claim that encryption was historically impossible in the same way the original comment didn't claim that it’s impossible for a cop to just sit around and watch a public road. The original point was about scale and the scale (and strength) of encryption available today was not possible for most people until the advent of computers.