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janrinok writes:

The FBI and other LEOs often complain about the risk to preventing and protecting against crime posed by the use of encryption on the internet. Recently, there have been several senior figures stating quite categorically that encryption will enable criminals to operate with impunity, completely defeating the efforts of those 'trying to protect us'.

In fact, next Wednesday, both the Senate Intelligence Commitee and the Senate Judiciary Committee are hosting "hearings" for [FBI Director James] Comey, about the issue of "going dark" due to encryption.

[...] So it's rather interesting that before all that, the US Courts had released their own data on all wiretaps from 2014, in which it appears that encryption was almost never an issue at all, and in the vast majority of cases when law enforcement encountered encryption, it was able to get around it. Oh, and the number of wiretaps where encryption was even encountered has been going down rather than up:

The number of state wiretaps in which encryption was encountered decreased from 41 in 2013 to 22 in 2014. In two of these wiretaps, officials were unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. Three federal wiretaps were reported as being encrypted in 2014, of which two could not be decrypted. Encryption was also reported for five federal wiretaps that were conducted during previous years, but reported to the AO for the first time in 2014. Officials were able to decipher the plain text of the communications in four of the five intercepts.

Obviously, if more communications are encrypted by default, it's true that the numbers here would likely rise. But the idea that there's some massive problem that requires destroying the safety of much of the internet, seems more than a bit far-fetched.