Surely such an argument is true for any network communication. My (admittedly vague) understanding of such monitoring is that it happens at the TCP/IP level.

Surely such an argument is true for any network communication. My (admittedly vague) understanding of such monitoring is that it happens at the TCP/IP level. Therefore, should we outlaw all 'insecure' TCP/IP communication? I can see good arguments for _encouraging_ HTTPS where necessary but not the blanket prohibition of HTTP.