Do you really believe a terrorist uses email?
The one thing the Petraeus affair points up is the apparent lack of sophistication used by our top spies in covering their tracks. The good news I guess is that just as there are dumb spies there is likely an equal number of dumb crooks. Access to email is a necessary investigatory tool. But the people we really need to fear are more skillful at using the Internet than apparently even the head of the CIA. Even the terror group planning 9/11 used a non-direct means of communications to pass on messages that were encrypted using a non-conventional technique known as steganography. They used a simple application to hide messages in picture files that were then posted on a third party commercial website that had no obvious connection to the terrorists. Greater government control will do nothing to stop this sort of covert communications if it is not also accompanied with better training for investigators who possess the necessary imagination to catch covert code. The Petraeus affair does not exactly inspire confidence that this will happen.
