There are three main stakeholders to consider: citizens, criminals, and governments. Citizens all have their own reasons for using cryptography, however they can be generally categorized as needing protection from lawbreakers and/or needing protection from government. Citizens may want to keep their credit card information secure from crackers who might intercept such data or keep their personal dealings hidden from prying eyes in the family, or they may cross the line between citizen and criminal and keep incriminating information hidden from the government.
Governments generally have the job of protecting citizens and protecting themselves. This entails the responsibility to diligently monitor for threats to either. Such monitoring necessarily involves either invading the privacy or limiting the freedom of individuals. But without privacy, there is no freedom, and without freedom there is no privacy. Therefore a government's best interest in cryptography tends to be inherently opposed to that of a democratic society that believes in rights of privacy.
Criminals, of course, need cryptography to protect themselves from capture and punishment. Citizens are typically threatened by criminal behavior, and therefore it is in citizens' best interest to curtail the freedom of a criminal. Similarly, criminals can threaten the sovereignty of the state, and so the state must seek to limit the freedom of criminals. Lastly, criminal activity can threaten other criminals, and so criminals even seek protection from each other. Cryptography provides that protection by anonymizing a criminal's identity and hiding a criminal's information.