This is the general problem with committing a crime - the authorities have forever to solve the crime, whereas you only have a limited amount of time in which you can commit the crime and "get away" with it.
This is true for things like encryption where once the encrypted data is captured it will eventually possible to decrypt it as technology advances, as well as things like murders, where new evidence may randomly come to light, or new technology can better analyze old evidence.
AFAIK most crimes in most "western"-like countries have a statute of limitations, after which you cannot be charged - say 5 / 10 years for light stuff, then 20 / 30 / maybe forever for more serious stuff, homicide and such.
EDIT: Important caveat - if they classify it as continuing violations, the time of the last one matters - though they still need to prove something in the acceptable time period.
I don't really understand vwhy people who need to encrypt thing to stop from going to prison, don't encrypt multiple times using different algorithms.
Surely that buys centuries of time.
- why doesn't everybody already encrypt everything to begin with? there's often a disconnect between the benefit and the ease/overhead of doing so (it's hard enough to for people to care about using distinct and strong passwords, or 2fa; if the implementer isn't concerned with their users' security then often no one is) - people are lazy in general and security takes effort for a variety of reasons. how many users do you know who want to put in more than one password on every boot/resume from sleep/hybernation (which would be necessary, as using the same password would obviously be dumb, and using a keyfile beyond the first layers breaks the model for having those layers in the first place)?
- hindsight is easier to gain than foresight. people rarely predict the specific fuck up that seals their fate, and most don't think about operational security at a high level of competency, never mind in ways that survive 5+ years of advancements in technology, and against someone whose job it is to keep on trying (or more realistically just waiting for developments/discoveries made in security research).
- how many operating systems can you name that support multiple layers of full disk (or root partition) encryption with little to no effort? probably the closest would be encrypted GRUB with LUKS, with ecryptfs for encrypted home, maybe an encrypted loopback filesystem, and finally individually encrypted files; mobile is far worse too (ie. how would you approach implementing your own several layers of encryption on blackberry? that's what system was broken in this instance). aosp/android? good luck. macOS you'll find much more difficult to do any 3rd party FDE, and anything you do get working will break in miraculous ways - close-knit integration hell. iOS? HA - try convincing Apple to let you do a better job on anything system-wide, and while you're at it convince them to let other browser vendors do a better job there too, it would seriously improve iOS and be great for the web if Safari wasn't holding the whole industry back.
Overall, it's generally not the encryption itself that breaks; sure sometimes, but far less often than other channels that can be attacked. Cold boot attack for a device still powered but locked to pull encryption keys from memory is fun, but more often it's a weak/dictionary-based password or a 4 digit passcode that bottlenecks the security offered all the way down to 16 measly bits, or just attacking the joints where the encryption begins and ends. If you weld a metal frame on top of a bamboo frame, it'll be the bamboo that breaks, not the metal.
Also, the article doesn't even specify if the encryption was broken; the "new technology capabilities" could have been simply the purchase of some new hardware tooling or software to extract and dump the keys from the hardware devices securing them, or simply a court order was obtained to compel RIM to do so on their behalf.
Wish they would clarify what caused the 5 year delay. Were they running a password solver algorithm the whole time or were there major advances in technology that allowed them to crack the encryption?
