> Personally I'd like to know that terrorists didn't have completely secure communications and government fishing trips where dealt with through the courts and a free press.
The efficacy of that strategy depends on the criminals not having access to encryption. But when you outlaw encryption then, like guns, only the outlaws will have it. Furthermore, it assumes that the problem in preventing the terrorist act is one of not being able to decrypt encrypted messages but that does not address the root causes of the problem.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King, Jr.