[baroffoos]

The problem is this situation is all or nothing. You can't break the encryption only for criminals, its either secure for everyone or its broken for everyone and not just in a way the government can exploit. Hackers will find a way to exploit it as well. Can you imagine the damage if the worlds IM history was leaked. This is probably the most sensitive data in the world.

Allowing governments access to IM history gives them way more power than they ever had. This is not just restoring lost powers. Never has to government been able to see your entire history of every conversation going back for years. I think most of us would be ok if it were actually possible to create a system where only the government after going through proper court process was able to intercept the messages from that time and forward but currently there is no good proposed solution and very dangerous laws like those in australia are being approved.