Comment by Zak

The thing I think a lot of people don't want to acknowledge is that unlike so many issues with grey areas and middle ground, this one is binary: either criminals can have secure communication, or nobody can.

I don't want a world in which nobody can have secure communications, so I must accept that criminals will have it, and police will have to work a little harder to catch them.

It gets worse though. More sophisticated criminals will find ways to do it even if it's illegal, so a law mandating backdoors will hurt the general population and stupid criminals, but not the smart, dangerous ones.