&gt; Manufacturer key escrow services seem almost sensible in this light.<p>I understand your position, but I could not disagree more strongly with your conclusion. Many of the techniques law enforcement is complaining about losing didn&#x27;t exist before cell phones (and smart phones in particular). The challenges they face in a world with FDE-by-default are not <i>new</i>, their biggest frustration is in <i>losing</i> capabilities that they feel have been valuable.<p>The problem with something like key escrow is that while there <i>might</i> be value in occasionally providing access to law enforcement, there is absolute certainty of damage in cases where the keys are lost, stolen, or compromised -- all of which happen with alarming regularity already. You can&#x27;t un-ring the bell of a data loss due to compromised encryption - so the only real question is how many abuses we should be expected to endure in order to realize marginal benefits in some circumstances.<p>It is understandably inconvenient &amp; frustrating for law enforcement to lose access to the contents of smartphones, but that alone is not sufficient justification for universally compromising one of the layers responsible for protecting our data.