Honestly speaking, encryption never stopped me. Doesn't matter if it is something simple like M9 xor described in this story or fancy AES/HMAC from Canon or Sony.
It just makes reversing more complicated and invasive. You have to open body, rip off flash or solder wires somewhere to sniff comms. Unlike Apple, camera vendors are not that paranoid and try to keep firmware unencrypted on flash to reduce the boot time. In other words this is the part when your wife can kill you for bricking the camera :)