That's an argument against showing scary warnings on self-signed certs, not against SSL. It would be nice if there was a httpr:// scheme that would be like HTTPS but without certificate checking.
I'm arguing against making SSL mandatory, because that will force NSA to break it so they can do their work, and then we will have nothing to protect our privacy.
More encryption is not a solution to a political problem: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2508864
That line of reasoning sounds bizarre to me. It sounds like "don't add a lock to your door, because that will force the criminals to break the lock, and then your door will be unlocked".
Try this one, it's better, but not perfect:
Imagine what happened if some cheap invention turned all buildings into inpenetrable fortresses unless you had a key for the lock.
Now police can not execute a valid judge-sanctioned search warrant.
How long time do you think lawmakers will take to react ?
If the problem is with the analogy, without analogies this time:
> I'm arguing against making SSL mandatory, because that will force NSA to break it so they can do their work, and then we will have nothing to protect our privacy.
Without SSL, our privacy is unprotected, since eavesdroppers can read our traffic. Now add SSL, and eavesdroppers cannot read the traffic. Then NSA breaks it, and eavesdroppers can read our traffic again - we've just circled back to the beginning. We will have nothing to protect our privacy, but we already had nothing to protect our privacy before we added SSL; and in the meantime before the NSA breaks it, we had privacy.
And it assumes that the NSA will be able to break it, and that the NSA is the only attacker which matters.
There are many ways to break SSL, the easiest, cheapest and most in tune with the present progression towards police-states is to legislate key-escrow.
Google "al gore clipper chip" if you don't think that is a real risk.
It's bizarre to think if the NSA could break TLS they're holding back.