This isn’t a fair response. If law enforcement knows that some specific person is doing a crime, they can and do plant always-on microphones on their car. The law enforcement concern is that they can’t do that at all in this context. Even if you know for sure someone’s planning a serious crime, there’s no way to spy on their E2E encrypted communications.

Most law enforcement agencies argue (with varying degrees of believability) that they will not treat an encryption backdoor like a universal bug they can just listen in on whenever.

Of course there is - exactly the same way as they do so with the car: get a warrant, and surveil the target.

How would a warrant give them the ability to see what’s said in an encrypted chat? You can’t instal a camera on someone’s shoulder like you can put a bug in their car.

Nobody said their job was "easy" in the hiring advertisement!

When you get a Judge to agree that their is adequate reason and gain a warrant, you use your resources to surveil the target in public/private, using your considerable means as a law enforcement agency. Drones, bugs, malware, other espionage techniques.

This is nothing more or less than these agencies complaining that free peoples are making their jobs harder.

One big problem is cowardice: it is easier and safer to attack the liberties of law abiding citizens (because they won't shoot you in the face), in the hopes that, by sacrificing your citizen's liberties you might pick up a few more incompetent bad guys. Its way more dangerous to actually go out, do your job, and surveil a dangerous bad guy, who will shoot you in the face.

If that's a problem -- then the law enforcement complainers need to go get a new, safer job, and leave the heavy lifting to their braver counterparts.

What if they talk with someone while walking through a forest? Should that also be forbidden, because it's difficult to spy on?

I’m not saying end to end encryption should be forbidden, just that it’s a toxic argument to go “haha, stupid law enforcement doesn’t realize there are already places that are hard to spy on!” Of course there are, nobody thinks otherwise.

So what makes E2E encryption different, that the same arguments don't apply to other difficult-to-spy-on places? I think people should be made acutely aware it's not an assault on encryption - it's an assault on their right to keep secrets at all.

The difference is that, unlike forests and private spaces, (easy and consumer-grade) E2E encryption is new. Law enforcement is concerned that adding this new thing to society will change things for the worse. That's a reasonable concern in general, even if we don't think it's true in this specific case.

You don't have a general right to keep secrets from law enforcement. With a warrant, they can spy on you to try and get your secrets in ways that would otherwise be scandalous or downright illegal. If you don't think law enforcement should be allowed to steal people's secrets at all, fair enough, but that's a very radical view and I don't think most people supporting E2E encryption share it.

Cameras and phone surveillance and miniature microphones are also new. When technology encroaches upon privacy, "that's just the way things are!", but when it protects it, "it's new and different and must be restricted!".

More to your point, I do think law enforcement should be allowed to spy on people when necessary (by whatever definition of 'necessary'). But that's a far cry from saying that people should be compelled to assist in the spying.

There's no warrant to compel someone to knowingly carry a bug.

Novelty is not an arguement against rights. Just because some in every generation is stupid enough to think so doesn't mean we should acknowledge it.

Mobile phone screen recording using malware.