I'm afraid it's been going on for decades: https://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/
And that's partly why the mistrust exists. Law enforcement agencies are not given the benefit of the doubt on this because of previous abuses. There's a history here which is too long to #include every time the subject comes up.
Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question
"Controllable" is a word shift from "secret", and that's what the US 1st Amendment guarantees: the existence of non-controllable means of remote communication. After all, one of the founding heroes of the US was a ""terrorist"" who brought messages to the other members of his anti-government cell.
The UK situation is much worse, and a full discussion would have to involve the abuses of the last generation of antiterrorist police and military action in Northern Ireland.
I just can't understand why any resemblance of a limitation of the privacy over electronic communication is greeted with such outrage. I do understand that encryption can be either controllable XOR secure. But my point is that secure encryption has never been a right: actually, the discussion has just started, due to the recent spread of its usage.
Again, telephone and (thanks for reminding) courier have always been controllable, thus not secure. Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question (like, for example, cloning: it is technically possible, but drastically controlled by laws). I understand it's quite natural for us HN-ers to stand on one side, but the world is bigger that HN.