It seems like a sort of "power vacuum" [1] situation. If the government doesn't opt to take the power to read everyone's communications, FB & co will take that

It seems like a sort of "power vacuum" [1] situation. If the government doesn't opt to take the power to read everyone's communications, FB & co will take that power by layering on encryption to shut the government out, while maintaining endpoint control such that they alone can extract message plaintext. The "debate" is just whatever these two sides have come up with to try and sell their preference to the public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_vacuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_vacuum