[colemannugent]

Can anyone explain why the government wouldn't just mandate that they be given all the keys from the start? Why would they put up with Apple as a middleman who could potentially refuse their requests?

Also, this key escrow scheme is near impossible to scale to more than one government. Now we need a way to authenticate government agents, good luck with that.

[allenz]

The government would be a single point of failure so it's cheaper and more secure to privatize. Also, private control of keys acts as a check upon government abuse.