Many people are surprised to learn that weak cryptography systems (including any systems of any ostensible strength with mandated or other backdoors) are vastly more dangerous than using NO cryptography at all.
Why? Because if someone is lulled into complacency and passes their private information through a compromised system as defined above, it becomes vulnerable to criminal and/or illicit government abuse.
On the other hand, if you KNOW that a communications channel is not encrypted, you know what the limits are about what you should or should not pass through that channel.
