> As far as designing in weaknesses and/or golded keys. Well, it does not add to security, but assuming that the other nation states are already able to break encryption and read what they want, it does not weaken it either for national security reasons. Except that it's only your country whose encryption gets broken. You're basically giving your enemies free reign to spy on you and your country if you force a golden key system into use. Do you think China will use your custom crypto system? Or any other country for that matter? You end up in a situation where you _lose_ power because you want to spy on journalists, human rights activists and undesirable parts of the population.

> What it does provide however are easy means to stop terrorists, pedos and drug dealers from conducting business.

I can't remember the last time a law passed to hunt down the pedos/terrorists/drug dealers hasn't been used to surpress or hurt some part of the population. Remember when drug dealers just used SMS? When pedos exchanged magazines and floppies? When terrorists just called each other? And how the government, with all its wiretapping power, couldn't stop any of them? Encryption is a nice bonus for these people, but a lack of it is not stopping anyone. Tangentially, if a country would focus on properly treating addiction instead of making boogeymen out of those darn drug dealers we might actually get anywhere as a species.

> Remains the risk that some bad guys could get their hands on the golden keys. Yes, design to handle that?

How would that even work in a crypto system? If you have the key, you can decrypt. That's the basis of cryptography. Wishing away the glaringly obvious problem with the proposed system by telling people to "design it not to break like that" doesn't work.