It is totally irresponsible of social media companies who provide end to end encryption on their messaging platforms to allow criminal activity to be active on their platforms and say there is not much they can do about it because they would have to weaken their encryption to monitor if criminal activity is taking place on their platform and then to throw their toys out the pram when authorities come knocking on their door telling them they have to get their act together or else.
They control the endpoints and can and do comply with tap and trace type orders *right now* by using that access. What they don't do is expose private comms without a warrant, in a way that can be abused easily internally or from a breach by being able to easily read comms transiting over their network, or insecurely across the web to make dragnet surveillance easier. For that matter, even for services that dont enable that capability (including Signal) cops dont seem to have too much difficulty actually breaking into phones when the case warrants the resources. It's why the FBI withdrew their complaints against Apple the last time this came up in a major case in the US, they were able to get into the phone a difference way. And once you're in you can read anything decrypted at the edge (the phone).
For that matter *those* tools that enable breaking phones now are massive security problems, the CEO of Signal recently did a pretty impressive breakdown on how bad cellebrite's devices are security and data-integrity-wise using a unit he acquired.
Weakening encryption creates massive real security concerns that can and do get exploited without doing anything more to aid the goal you're talking about. And the surveillance and data capture such weakening enables is also a security vulnerability, it immediately becomes the biggest target surface around.
Do you *really* think you can create a backdoor such that somehow thousands of cops across dozens of agencies can access it but no bad actors can? Do you think there's no insider threat concerns with a tool that powerful? Do you think there's anything with perfect security? Even the NSA has had massive leaks of their tools.
Forgetting for a second about the ability of cops to abuse it, which we know can and does happen with current tools, weakening encryption creates a door that more than just law enforcement is likely to step through.
