And encryption does not automagically provide security. Your naivety here is touching, but dangerous.

What? Encryption does not provide security? Maybe not "automagically", but neither would some security method that he is describing, it would be nothing more than "flock", unless it used encryption.

As far as the windows scheme to do it, I'm only hazarding a guess from memeory, because I don't even boot windows anymore. It's been years. But I remember hacking some registery entries, trying to find some software key, and windows had some sort of "encryption ring" in the registery, where software writers could put id's and keys ( and who knows what else) to prevent people from running programs without authorization. It could( and probably is) used to hide data from unauthorized access.

But considering how easy the crackers come out with patches to bypass all this "security", I would say it's worthless, except to keep the "honest guy honest". It won't stop the person with bad intent.

But proper PGP encryption of data is about as good as you will get, as long as you don't consider Tempest style snooping. (Which is probably more widespread than people want to admit.)