You can make a vault that destroys the contents and is perfectly secure except for the implementation. That is basically the iPhone "problem" the FBI are complaining about.
> When forty spectators assembled for an outdoor trial, they reported that the safe seemed to be “on the point of explosion” and the gas issuing out of holes in the bottom of the safe meant it was “lifted some inches off the ground” forcing observes to retire to a “place of safety behind the building.”
Nothing really prevents you from having a safe that after N failed attempts from destroying the contents with explosives.
> Nothing really prevents you from having a safe that after N failed attempts from destroying the contents with explosives.
I would hope that a number of laws prohibit my carrying on my person a small safe filled with explosives and a known-effective trigger. Hypothetically, we could create such a safe.
Practically, however, we could not create one that would be as easily and broadly used as an iPhone. Therefore, the nature of the social question presented by a perfectly secure (for all intents and purposes, or at least a future iteration that is) mass market device is fairly novel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8017041/MI6-Q...
> When forty spectators assembled for an outdoor trial, they reported that the safe seemed to be “on the point of explosion” and the gas issuing out of holes in the bottom of the safe meant it was “lifted some inches off the ground” forcing observes to retire to a “place of safety behind the building.”
Nothing really prevents you from having a safe that after N failed attempts from destroying the contents with explosives.