[xyzzyz]

Not necessarily. There is a middle ground between the two: common criminals that simply use the tools that Google, Apple etc create to make security for normal people easy. If it's effortless to enable full end to end encryption on your phone, then not only will your grandpa enjoy benefits of it, but also a cocaine dealer or a burglar trying to fence stolen goods.

But yes, I think that there are lower-hanging fruits available for pick up here. I wish we lived in a reality where backdooring encryption was the best available path to reduce crime.

[nybble41]

The lazy sort of criminal that relies on commonplace, corporate-controlled communications apps would be caught using a traditional investigative approach regardless of any end-to-end encryption. It's the more sophisticated ones that they're using as justification for these backdoors—exactly the type that might be mildly inconvenienced at most by backdoors in standard communications services.

If what these criminals are doing is causing actual harm then there must be sufficient offline physical evidence to track and convict them by without direct access to their communications networks. Far from reducing crime, the enforcement of compulsory backdoors would itself be a crime committed by the government against its own citizens on a massive scale.