I agree with Tichy - I think LE authorities know exactly what they are doing.
If it weren't "think of the children", it would be "al Qaeda was organizing anonymously". They need a reason to create a hostile climate for privacy and anonymity.
Well, here's the thing with that tactic. If I wanted to organize anonymously, I'd have my co-conspirators gather on .onions sites, most likely an address run and known only by us. If anti-TOR shit gets real, then I believe we'll see non-trivial growth of the various darknets out there.
If every tor exit node vanished today, tor's darknet half will thrive and the network would still be valuable. It's trivial to set up a hidden service. If you want to whistle-blow to the media, you'd set up a http or ftp share and drop the .onion URL in the mail to your journalists of choice.
If it weren't "think of the children", it would be "al Qaeda was organizing anonymously". They need a reason to create a hostile climate for privacy and anonymity.