I think it is a simple question. There have also been cases where a judge issued a legal warrant that was impossible to enforce because the information was physically destroyed.
Should it be illegal to burn a piece of paper?
The FBI and our police forces have been complaining about the 'going dark' problem for years. But in reality, it is far easier today to spy on or collect data than it has ever been before. If the argument was that our data collection was substantially lessening, maybe we could have a discussion about that.
But data collection is substantially expanding, and the FBI is essentially saying, "yeah, but it's not expanding fast enough." The FBI is phrasing this as a complicated question because they're saying it's a choice between the status quo and "the FBI can't listen in on anything." But in practice, if you look at the direction surveillance capabilities are heading, the real choice is between the status quo and "the FBI can listen in on everything."
And that's a really easy question to answer. Of course we shouldn't give up all of our freedoms just so the police can always access everything they want, all the time. Of course people should be able to exercise personal freedom even if it occasionally means a police investigation is hampered.
The FBI wants to phrase this as a choice between encryption and anarchy, but given the direction government surveillance is headed, encryption is the middle ground position. What the FBI wants is the ability to access anything they can get a warrant for, no matter what, for any reason.
And I guarantee once they got that, the next "complicated question" would be whether or not warrants were hindering their investigations too much.