1) We have to trust the 3rd parties with the master key, not just now, but forever. You can't "un-give" them master key access, nor has anyone proposed such a

1) We have to trust the 3rd parties with the master key, not just now, but forever. You can't "un-give" them master key access, nor has anyone proposed such a system. The idea is already unworkable for that very reason. 2) If you have jurisdiction over someone, you can force them to decrypt something based on a warrant, so it isn't even desireable for a backdoor to exist. Rather than hoping they follow the rules in their ultra-secret room that normal people will never see, they can work through the court system, publicly. 3) There's a concept called "attack surface." A backdoor increases that, by increasing the number of secrets. 4) The article goes into detail over the real-world failures of systems like these. 5) The device manufacturer does not necessarily have our interests at heart and should not be the party contesting warrants in any reasonable system. 6) Even if the encryption scheme was sound, human error trumps all. We're introducing all sorts of elements, each of which is a point of failure, and none of which has interests aligned with those of the end user (us). OTP is provably secure, you know. It's the key management that gets you. So we haven't demonstrated the need for this vs. compelling someone via warrant to decrypt and other means. We have good reason to believe that illegal, dragnet surveillance is the real reason for opposition. Even if you believe that our own government is (and always will be) perfectly virtuous with that power, there are many foreign governments with similar capabilities. Not sending them any traffic? Think again (BGP hijacks). And we have lots of experience showing that such systems leave people vulnerable to bad guys. So this asks us to take on big risks for bad reasons and we know that. There just aren't any good reasons not to dismiss and oppose such systems outright and there are many good reasons to be suspicious of the motives of anyone telling us otherwise. I blacklisted WaPo some time ago as not being a credible news source. This editorial only gives me further reason to keep them blacklisted.