[meows]

Police can still intercept communications, including mail, phone calls, etc., with classic investigative techniques like bugging a person's home. Then you can see all their passwords, all their emails, their off-line conversations, and so on. Bugging somebody probably reveals more information than security backdoors.

The one big difference between bugging someone's home vs. encryption backdoor is one of scale, and I don't think citizens should so substantially yield their security so that the state can save money.

I think the natural inclination of voters isn't relevant just yet because privacy and encryption are so far down the list of topics of national salience, or topics to organize voters, that it doesn't register on anyone's political radar. If encryption or security backdoors are mentioned on the national stage, it will be entirely as a subtopic of only terrorism.