I don't find this troubling at all. Who cares if someone has something on their phone. That something is just a picture or words. Pictures and words should not be against the law. When people really break the law is when they do something physical, like take the pictures, make the bomb, hit the kid, etc. Needing pictures and words from a phone are just excuses for government overreach and for the government to take the easy way out. There were not any smart phones 50 years ago, yet we still caught terrorists, thieves, child pornographers, etc.
Bad people cannot hide from the authorities even if they have encrypted phones. They will still make mistakes. They will still get caught. We don't need to make all phones easy to read in order to catch criminals. If that is the goal, they you have to be OK with the government monitoring every phone call and every email. Because that makes catching the criminal really really easy.
The other issue is that once the government can read the phone, then the bad guys and gals will find another way to store information and the only result of this goody-too-shoes approach is the LACK of security us good-guys and good-gals have against hackers.
Are you kidding? If someone has a picture of a kid getting raping on his phone, that's totally fine? Who cares?
It's not just pictures and words. It's a person's life. It's a kid whose entire life is destroyed. What kind of utterly broken human being can't see that?
Yes, 50 years ago there were no smart phones. We have a genius in the house! And yes we still caught terrorists and child pornographers and all the other bad guys. Because the evidence was often tangible and could be gathered via a search warrant, via legal wire tapping, etc. But in the age of encryption, much of the evidence that once existed in a tangible form is now digital and locked away behind an impenetrable wall.
Your attitude is incredibly naive. More and more of the incriminating evidence that law enforcement needs lives on encrypted phones, not in filing cabinets, not in shoeboxes in the basement, not buried in the back yard.
I find the entire issue very troubling as I value my privacy. But the belief that all of our digital information should be a no-go zone for law enforcement and that we somehow have a right to absolute 100% privacy above all else in the digital realm is unethical.