Some good points have been brought up on both sides of the matter. Only thing to add is that whenever I read about XYZ trying to do ABC to protect us, I always think: what would I do in their shoes?
And my answer to these matters (online espionage, etc) is always: hire a computer junkie (like us) to do the job. No need for the Big Brother-type, uber-sniffer, StarWars type project.
What I mean is, when I was younger, I was into the "file sharing" thing. I knew the hang outs and where to go to find stuff. All that's needed by government agencies is to hire a bunch of us/these types and before long they'll have the biggest warez hubs, HPAVC forums, kiddie pr0n sites, etc. Infiltration and espionage has been successful for a very long time. No reason it won't work on this "front".
The FBI has supposedly done this to sniff out large networks of credit card scammers. The guy who was doing it was interviewed by Wired, if you care to search it up.
