The interesting thing about all these debates, that many here seem to forget is: these actions are awful, but in the grand scheme of things, they are actually good and a sign of progress.

The reason governments do this is that due to the Internet, for the first time in human history, humans can have access to truly secure telecommunications. I'm pretty sure that before they could just phone tap/bug their way to all the communications they wanted to follow and this is proving harder today. That's why they're making so much noise about it.

It will be a fight to keep the (favorable for individuals) status quo, but in my opinion the status quo is an evolution over what we had say, 40 years ago.