If anyone, even the manufacturer, has employees who know how to unencrypt the phone, sufficient money will break that information loose.
What happens when the Chinese offer $10 Billion for that information?
Apple is very smart to make it unbreakable by Apple. Keeps them out of all sorts of court battles.
And, a law that US sold phones have to have keys given to the government just means that the real bad guys will buy foreign phones and the technological lead will transfer from the US to somewhere else. Do you really want that?
No, I don’t want any of those scenarios. Of course I prefer Apple and other phones to have proprietary privacy tech and no one subject to international tech blackmail. But this is new territory for human technological ethics and if there were a way t9 still allow search and seizure for criminals, while NOT compromising all the th8ngs you both mentioned, I am for it.
Just as I am for the death penalty for convicted criminals who have by their own actions demonstrated they don’t deserve to breathe air here any more, so I am for Gd given privacy to be removed from those whose heinous acts have removed their natural rights.