As is always the case with these fights, the fundamental fact is that the war is asymmetric. We have to be right all of the time, they have to be right once. We have to break all encryption everywhere forever, they have to find one non-backdoor'd solution.
If you really hold the backdoor proponents' feet to the fire, they'll admit that yes, this is true, but at least with a backdoor you can catch some of the terrorists/child abusers/etc, some of the time (of course, you only get the dumb ones...), and we wouldn't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But of course, saying you want to compromise all privacy in the developed world to catch a few dumb traffickers doesn't get votes.
As is always the case with these fights, the fundamental fact is that the war is asymmetric. We have to be right all of the time, they have to be right once. We have to break all encryption everywhere forever, they have to find one non-backdoor'd solution.
If you really hold the backdoor proponents' feet to the fire, they'll admit that yes, this is true, but at least with a backdoor you can catch some of the terrorists/child abusers/etc, some of the time (of course, you only get the dumb ones...), and we wouldn't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But of course, saying you want to compromise all privacy in the developed world to catch a few dumb traffickers doesn't get votes.