[csandreasen]

This issue has absolutely nothing to do with the NSA. As you point out yourself, this applies only to data stored locally on the phone. When was the last time the NSA had physical access to your phone?

Your argument seems to be that law enforcement wants to keep the phones unencrypted so that they can seize them with a warrant, hand them over to the NSA, and then the NSA can hand the data back to the police using "parallel construction" in order for the police to hide where the data came from (i.e.: acquired lawfully by the police with a warrant)