What A.G. Barr is insinuating is to regulate algorithms.
Copyright is regulation of implementations.
For example, GPG is a software implementation of encryption algorithms. It has a copyright (used as the basis for its copyleft license). RSA, however, is an algorithm: a mathematical reality that can be described by copyrighted works, but never itself copyrighted.
A.G. Barr has expressed a desire to compel every American who implements that algorithm to do so incorrectly.
Words are just data. Are there illegal combinations of words to exchange? The law says, YES. Some speech is absolutely illegal, including making credible death threats, conspiring to break other laws, or disclosing certain state secrets to foreign powers.
Very few people argue that since words are easily available to everyone, that it is futile to make some combinations of words illegal.
Words uttered in a situational context that renders them of immediate harm are illegal. I can say "Fire!" in a theater while giving a lecture or putting on a show. I cannot knowingly claim the theatre is on fire when it isn't to cause a panic.
Point is, it is not the Word or content that is illegal. It is the union of word and context that is illegal.
Subtle difference, but it's the only thing that keeps that type of law from getting absurd and out of hand very quickly.
The number is not illegal, it’s the number in conjunction with a situational context that is illegal.
We may disagree with the intent of the law, but the argument that we are making numbers illegal, or math illegal, is parallel to the argument that other laws make words illegal.
Ok maybe you could catch me attempting to decrypt it, and be like "gotcha, that was in fact a secret!" But I'd reckon it would be more effective to simply wait until you finish decrypting the data, and simply take it from you.
If there are going to be laws around this, it's sure to be very pathological, and scary.
If the context around the number is that it is stored in a .mkv file with a name that looks like a Disney property, or a .key file attached to a program that uses such things for some kind of encryption the government unwisely bans, well, the number suddenly has context around it that makes an argument about the number and the context.
Same for words, really. Words about a threat to a government leader are probably fine in a text file that looks like a short story. Those same words in combination with a history of advocating violent revolution, &c. might make for a different argument.
In that sense, copyright = data, and encryption = functions.
That basically means we have to entirely get rid of copyright, since all data (books, movies, software, corporate secrets, state secrets, etc) are just very large numbers.
Do we believe that there should be no restriction on the sharing of any data? I can see the appeal, but there are far reaching consequences if we say that.