It is you and law enforcement who are being binary. Plenty of laws are currently being enforced in the presence of strong encryption. The sky hasn't fallen.

In fact, these high profile cases the FBI et al attempt to use as wedges generally involve someone who has already been caught with plenty of evidence, but the authoritarian impulse still demands more.

As far as laws that can only be enforced/observed by reading people's private thoughts and communications, then yes indeed, why have those at all?

If we're agreed that there is no deep principle is at stake and there are shades of grey, it seems that the difference between end-to-end encryption and link-level encryption (as cloud providers typically do) is a matter of practicality?

Law enforcement agencies send legal requests to Google and Facebook all the time, and the sky hasn't fallen.

Actually, for all X where X exists, the sky hasn't fallen :)

That's fallacious generalizing, though. "All sorts of things have been allowed, so allowing this other thing can't hurt." Yes, yes it can.

I think we can agree that, say, putting a chip in everyone's heads that transmits their thoughts to the government would indeed, as you put it, cause the sky to fall. I'm not trying to suggest that outlawing encryption is the exact same thing, but I do believe it would cause much more injustice than it would prevent.

There is a deep principle at stake for sure - individual privacy in thoughts and communications.