Reply #8: Um so? Other than the boogah boogah of "big brother"....

[Robb]

...Can someone explain to me why monitoring potential assaults on electric grids and nuclear power plants is a bad idea?

From WSJ:

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.

Edited to add another sentence from WSJ.