The problem when considering a thread model is that you have to think what the government would do, not what they could do. The government could shut down the internet and then we are fucked.

However, the government would not do that because that would be to damaging. Passing laws as you suggest is not quite as unlikely, as we see from the Apple case but its still a pretty tall order.

My big worry is that they stop trying the legal way and start requiring backdoors threw secret orders and such.