> "My conclusion so far is that you cannot take an absolutist view on this," he said. "So if your bargain is strong encryption, no matter what, that we can and should in fact create 'black boxes,' then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years, and it's fetishizing our phones above every other value. And that can't be the right answer."

http://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/

> For more than 260 years, the contents of that page—and the details of this ritual—remained a secret. They were hidden in a coded manuscript, one of thousands produced by secret societies in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the peak of their power, these clandestine organizations, most notably the Freemasons, had hundreds of thousands of adherents, from colonial New York to imperial St. Petersburg. Dismissed today as fodder for conspiracy theorists and History Channel specials, they once served an important purpose: Their lodges were safe houses where freethinkers could explore everything from the laws of physics to the rights of man to the nature of God, all hidden from the oppressive, authoritarian eyes of church and state. But largely because they were so secretive, little is known about most of these organizations. Membership in all but the biggest died out over a century ago, and many of their encrypted texts have remained uncracked, dismissed by historians as impenetrable novelties.

Encryption was in the hands of people outside the government since before the US came into existence.

Yeah, it looks that way but where is the substance?

Why doesn't he openly discuss the pros and cons of both sides to finally reach a conclusion?

"But the dangers are real." is not a rational balancing of reasons. It is just a paranoid statement.