[aleph_minus_one]

> once upon a time i had a boss who asked for a "super admin" account to "trump" the domain administrators..and a "master key" to decrypt any file , in case the user lost their key.

Key escrow is a well-known concept in cryptography:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_escrow

It's just that these "master keys" are super-dangerous to handle for obvious reasons.