Should the government be able to hack our files?

I read this interesting article on the bbc news website about the government asking Microsoft to give them a backdoor into the new file encryption system on Windows Vista.
To be honest, I’m not sure if the government should be allowed a backdoor because at some point some geeky hacker will find it and exploit it.However, I can understand why the government want it. Imagine if a computer is confiscated from a suspected terrorist, at the moment, the terrorist can claim he/she(there are female terrorists) has forgotten their password and not incur any major charges. However, if the government have a backdoor, they can read any files that may contain potentially useful data to thwart any future attacks. Similarly, a suspected paedophile may have encrypted his/her pictures and the police may not be able to prove the person is a paedophile and hence they may be released.
Perhaps these are good reasons for allowing the government a backdoor. But as I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of geeks out there ready and waiting to bring microsoft down and if one of them finds this backdoor, no-one’s data is private any more! Hmm… it’s a conundrum!
In other news, I recieved no valentines day cards