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By that argument, why have laws against stealing (criminals will just take stuff), or grevious bodily harm (criminals will just hit people), or verbal abuse (criminals will just keep shouting at people).

I don't buy this argument at all -- if we ban encryption, except for government sanctioned encryption, it will be the easiest thing in the world to detect if anyone tries sending it over the open internet.



Poor analogy.

Stealing is the actual bad behaviour, stealing itself is bad for society, anyone who steals should be punished.

Substitute "encryption" for "stealing" then you know why you're wrong.


> it will be the easiest thing in the world to detect if anyone tries sending it over the open internet.

And how shall "goverment sanctioned encryption" be distinguished from "non sanctioned encryption"? The point of (good) encryption is to make the result look like stochastically random bytes.


If government can demand the keys, they can take them and decrypt it.

You could claim you are sending packets of random bytes for no reason to a friend, but I doubt any jury would believe you.


> If government can demand the keys, they can take them and decrypt it.

The question isn't how its decrypted, the question is how to determine WHICH traffic to decrypt in order to inspect it.




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