IMO, that's clearly a 1st amendment violation.
There is no requirement that they be able to access the content (building the safe is not illegal), but there is a procedure that lets them try under appropriate conditions. What the parent posters have been talking about is a permission structure like that where law enforcement can try their best. Doesn't force anyone to write software in a particular way.
> On a case-by-case basis, with proper court process, requiring an individual to provide a passcode or thumbprint to unlock a device could assist law enforcement in obtaining critical evidence without undermining the security or privacy of the broader population.
I can write a piece of messaging software which writes one of the following two in a log, without exception: (1) hash of /dev/urandom (2) message history with passphrase encryption
If the government comes to me and asks for my passphrase and I say "I don't have one", how can they prove that I have a passphrase and am in contempt of any lawful order? The only actual way to enforce this is to make it illegal to write software which does (1).
My point is: the reason the quoted parts in the top-level post are ugly is because search warrants should already be sufficient, unless you want to crack down on the ability of citizens to do the above.
If not decrypting what looks like random bytes (because that's what good encryption looks like) becomes punishable in a country, it's no longer safe to visit that country with any digital data carriers.