What you say is close but not quite accurate. What you describe is what used to happen before mobile phones, people called each other on pay phones and used coded messages. You had to infiltrate these organizations to catch them. The same solution works today. It is just not as manpower and time efficient as back doors.
The reason this is a fight now is because you can target the chain. To use your analogy above: it is more like I know someone in that tribe and I send them a message in english and they translate and pass it along. On the other side is someone in the tribe who translates it back into english for the recipient. The message is never broken in its encoded form, only on the on/off ramps. Pressure can be applied to Apple or WhatsApp to provide access to the data pre/post encoding. This is what the Australia laws demands (and the inability to disclose the back door). The point remains the same, it is only as strong as its weakest link.
How can we know that WhatsApp hasn't been patched with a back door? What about the operating system? What about the secure enclave chip itself? The only hope we have here is that companies will say no and/or whistleblowers will speak out.
The reason this is a fight now is because you can target the chain. To use your analogy above: it is more like I know someone in that tribe and I send them a message in english and they translate and pass it along. On the other side is someone in the tribe who translates it back into english for the recipient. The message is never broken in its encoded form, only on the on/off ramps. Pressure can be applied to Apple or WhatsApp to provide access to the data pre/post encoding. This is what the Australia laws demands (and the inability to disclose the back door). The point remains the same, it is only as strong as its weakest link.
How can we know that WhatsApp hasn't been patched with a back door? What about the operating system? What about the secure enclave chip itself? The only hope we have here is that companies will say no and/or whistleblowers will speak out.