I think these networks were always an inevitable development, and not because of the current obvious attempts to intercept and control communication, but because of its inevitability.
It has also occurred to me that some technological countermeasures to a lot of the dirty tricks at any conceivable point upstream would best be accomplished using a true peer to peer network of private individuals, and participating in a sort of cooperative networking framework. It would be a borderline tinfoil hat approach to the problem. However, if the question is, indeed, not whether you're paranoid, but whether you're paranoid enough, I can safely say, "Yes I am!"