I think you missed the main point of my argument. I am not, in the post, claiming either that we should or should not create a magical duplicate skeleton key.

I think you missed the main point of my argument. I am not, in the post, claiming either that we should or should not create a magical duplicate skeleton key. I am claiming that a rigorous argument against creating such a key would have to take into account online crime as it exists today, and argue why we still shouldn't attempt to create a back-door marked "good guys only". There are many forms this argument could take: that the back-door would be useless for its intended purpose; that the harm would outweigh the benefits; that it would be unconstitutional etc. etc. The one argument I will not accept _against_ a back-door is that online crime is not a real problem. This just hands the pro-back-door community a massive stick to beat the other side with. By the way, > but we didnt turn public libraries into listening posts As far as I know, my local library doesn't have Al-Qaeda's Inspire magazine, nor The Anarchist's Cookbook. I haven't checked for sure though, just in case it is in fact a listening post - people have landed on no-fly lists for stupid reasons before now. (Weirdly enough, during the Cold War, Switzerland quite officially published a book called Total Resistance (Der Totale Widerstand) and made it available in at least some public libraries. It was a basically a manual of "how to become a ~~terrorist~~ resistance fighter if the Soviets invade".) > confidence art is a tale as old as time itself That is entirely true, but it seems to me there's a lot more of it around since the internet made it a lot easier to get in the business.