Speaking privately was not, historically, the bedrock of free speech. For the entire history of the First Amendment, the government has been able to get access to private speech with a warrant: they could search your person, house, papers and, effects and even compel people you talked to to tell the government what you said.<p>I don&#x27;t think the government needs encryption backdoors either. But I also don&#x27;t think they implicate free speech, at least in the First Amendment sense of the concept. That has always focused on protecting public political and artistic expressions, not on making personal communications beyond the reach of law enforcement.