> Discoverers claim that encryption doesn't matter. I find that difficult to believe.
It sounds to me more like they're blithely saying "Oh we'll decrypt that later" without demonstrating, or even explicitly stating, that they have any way to decrypt it.
So the encryption matters, and they're not denying it. They're just saying that in time they hope to be able to decrypt it.
Well, the carriers are giving THEIR encryption keys to the NSA. . . but not to crooks. Oh, wait, maybe NSA and crooks are one and the same, depending on one's definition. Apple's iMessage encryption is not shared with anyone.
The ability to decode any encryption depends on how complex the key is. . . a sufficiently complex key can take years or eons to unencrypt. If the Carrier's key is simple, and the data is sufficiently repetitive, it would trivial for anyone to decode it. I suspect the level is not too high.