Why is it considered different from a physical safe? The government already has the ability and laws to compel citizens to provide access, why should it be any different with encryption?
It shouldn't be any different. In fact there have been court cases in which individuals have been compelled to provide decryption keys for encrypted disks.
The difference here is that the government wants vastly more access in the digital world than they have in the analog world. It's like asking all safe makers to include a secret combination, unknown to the safe's owner, that can also be used to unlock the safe.
