The supposed middle ground is that you force the naval engineers to, against their will, build the submarine with just a few extra holes.
Security is only as good as the weakest link. If you can bypass actual crypto and fallback to the world's justice systems, you've made a catestrophic compromise somewhere. In such a security system any crypto is pure deception. This is untenable in 2016.
I am deeply disappointed by President Obama's remarks:
> President Obama echoed those remarks on Friday, saying technology executives who were “absolutist” on the issue were wrong.
We can't always look at two extremes and try to go the middle way. If someone said asbestos causes cancer and someone else said but it is a good insulator and I need approval to put ten feet of asbestos in the walls of the school, we don't automatically try to say "well, ok apparently it is toxic so what about five feet?" No, we'd say we can't put asbestos as it is bad.
It sounds very nice to be fair and balanced but sometimes the middle ground is not a good outcome. Not to mention seeking the middle ground in everything leaves us susceptible to Overton window. I don't know what to say other than that I am deeply disappointed.
Security is only as good as the weakest link. If you can bypass actual crypto and fallback to the world's justice systems, you've made a catestrophic compromise somewhere. In such a security system any crypto is pure deception. This is untenable in 2016.