> I also consider the EFF's and tech community's technical arguments to be rather weak and transparent attempts to skirt the core issue: we don't want backdoors for governments, period.

We don't really want them. However, by longstanding precedent they're entitled to them whenever the technological system at hand enables it. Telephony, postal service, and so on.

You're absolutely right! Democracy is exactly the method to apply to a political issue. It's so applicable, we applied the democracy mechanism to this issue centuries ago and continue to do so. If we fall back to it here, we're going to lose, and we'll be forced to include backdoors in everything.