How is this worse than key escrow? You can still use PGP without having to give your secret key to the government. In a world of key escrow, the FBI would not have to put pressure on anyone to give up a secret key, because they would already have the key.
We won the cryptowars, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. By the time we won the right to distribute strong cryptography there were hundreds of millions of people using the Internet without it, and the important protocols were all insecure. We have spent over a decade trying to jimmy cryptography into those protocols and are now stuck with a complete mess. We are still relying on passwords to authenticate people, we are still sending unsigned email in the clear, etc. Glen Greenwald had to be pestered by another journalist to even bother with OTR when Snowden tried to talk to him.
We won the cryptowars, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. By the time we won the right to distribute strong cryptography there were hundreds of millions of people using the Internet without it, and the important protocols were all insecure. We have spent over a decade trying to jimmy cryptography into those protocols and are now stuck with a complete mess. We are still relying on passwords to authenticate people, we are still sending unsigned email in the clear, etc. Glen Greenwald had to be pestered by another journalist to even bother with OTR when Snowden tried to talk to him.