Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…
Unbreakable encryption isn't new. One-time pads have been around for a long time. Book ciphers can be impenetrable when done properly. And there's always the tried-and-true technique of simply never writing anything down, and doing everything face to face. Even if you argue that this is too difficult and you need something modern and easy to use, uncrackable encryption programs have been available for maybe two decades now.
Yet regulators seem to still be able to get the information they need. They're often nearly toothless, but that's because of politics, not technology.