I don't see irretrievable data as being significantly different than data that never existed to begin with, the only real difference is the belief that something valuable is hidden behind encryption. If and until the encrypted data is made plain, there's no telling what it contains, it could be tax records, transactions, commerce, or it could be a copy of the 1987 American action comedy film "Ishtar".
In the case of tax records (and ignoring that government would have a copy of said records), consider a dispute with the government who claims that a deceased person didn't pay taxes while the heirs claim taxes were paid (obviously a contrived example). If the "proof" is unavailable because the deceased encrypted it, then the result is the same as if the encrypted data never existed. The heirs could say that any random noise is encrypted data that provides proof of payment, but without any way to decrypt (and, arguably, to authenticate it) that random noise into actionable data, any claims the encrypted data contains the necessary "proof" is meaningless.
In other words, it's not the fault of encryption that the heirs have to deal with this beef from the government, but rather the fault of the deceased who encrypted things valuable to the heirs without a way for the heirs to access it (via sharing a key or explicit, chosen key escrow with a third party, etc). We like to say the answer will be legal and political, and it definitely has legal and political influences and impact, but given that the encryption is unbreakable, or the value of the dispute isn't worth the effort to undertake breaking it, we won't be able to legislate math to, uh, "not work".
Even if the government is the trusted entity of last resort and maintains a "legal" way to access encrypted content, there's nothing stopping the deceased in the above contrived example to have encrypted it using an unsanctioned algorithm or not have shared the key with the government, or whathaveyou. Then they die. Not only is the data inaccessible, but the responsible party is dead, and unable to have legal retribution rendered unto them for breaking the law. In this respect, the data is just as good as not having ever existed (which may very well have been the reason the now deceased encrypted it in the first place).
I understand your point. Mine is that if it were to become ubiquitous as Apple and others foresee it, it won't be just a few people or the paranoid or the ones who want things to remain hidden, but it will also encompass all the others who had no intention to keep things from others.
As personal computing continues the migration towards mobile devices and away from PCs, most people's personal data will be on systems where there is no way to get around a lost key. I'm actually interested to see how Apple plans to manage the accidental lockouts and data destruction when all of a person's information is on their mobile computing devices.
There won't be any "oh, let me take it to the Genius Bar" solution.
In the case of tax records (and ignoring that government would have a copy of said records), consider a dispute with the government who claims that a deceased person didn't pay taxes while the heirs claim taxes were paid (obviously a contrived example). If the "proof" is unavailable because the deceased encrypted it, then the result is the same as if the encrypted data never existed. The heirs could say that any random noise is encrypted data that provides proof of payment, but without any way to decrypt (and, arguably, to authenticate it) that random noise into actionable data, any claims the encrypted data contains the necessary "proof" is meaningless.
In other words, it's not the fault of encryption that the heirs have to deal with this beef from the government, but rather the fault of the deceased who encrypted things valuable to the heirs without a way for the heirs to access it (via sharing a key or explicit, chosen key escrow with a third party, etc). We like to say the answer will be legal and political, and it definitely has legal and political influences and impact, but given that the encryption is unbreakable, or the value of the dispute isn't worth the effort to undertake breaking it, we won't be able to legislate math to, uh, "not work".
Even if the government is the trusted entity of last resort and maintains a "legal" way to access encrypted content, there's nothing stopping the deceased in the above contrived example to have encrypted it using an unsanctioned algorithm or not have shared the key with the government, or whathaveyou. Then they die. Not only is the data inaccessible, but the responsible party is dead, and unable to have legal retribution rendered unto them for breaking the law. In this respect, the data is just as good as not having ever existed (which may very well have been the reason the now deceased encrypted it in the first place).