I think this may be the most important thing in the article.  If the conspirators really were communicating via in-game ephemera, the communication probably wasn&#x27;t encrypted at all.  If so, the hurdle that the security forces faced is not that they couldn&#x27;t access the communication, but that they couldn&#x27;t interpret it.<p>And that just shows how little a mandatory backdoor policy would help: being able to read something doesn&#x27;t mean you can understand it.  It&#x27;s always possible for someone to come up with a communication scheme that you didn&#x27;t anticipate or can&#x27;t interpret, and you can&#x27;t legislate away that capability.<p>So a backdoor policy doesn&#x27;t trade privacy for safety -- instead it trades privacy for a chance at safety, and pretty much just safety from careless, unprepared attackers.