Let's say the IRS wants to be able to confiscate bitcoins from tax evaders. So they go to the US courts to get this. A judge ends up ordering the bitcoin.org dev team to include a government backdoor so the IRS can take funds away from those who don't pay taxes.
The devs would be forced to comply right?
no because most of the world will simply not use such a client.
But bitcoin.org would be forced under court order to offer it?
then someone else will take the lead
In other cases the people were ordered to not talk about this change. People from unaffected countries have to review the patches, find the backdoor and publish this information.
Signed binaries is a bad idea in this case, because there is a central instance that control a BLOB and is not allowed to talk about the details. Almost no chance for the user of this signed binary to find the backdoor.