This is fine with me. Hopefully it will spur people to communicate privately and store data privately by default and it will add pressure for solutions which facilitate this to develop.
mega.co.nz is a great example of important steps in this direction, and I am looking forward to their e-mail, shared docs, etc offerings. And competition from others working on the same basic principles.
To the AP phone taps, I would not rule out that it is a bullshit story-line designed mostly to convince people that there is not mass gathering, storage, and analysis of pretty much all communications anyway.