Well, you see, the feds caught someone that turned snitch. The feds then developed these phones, and the snitch turned around and sold them to the criminal organizations. This was a targeted operation. They could have easily gotten wiretaps on their 'normal' phones with information from the snitch, and probably did.

This isn't a case of, 'criminals use these types of devices, so we will spy on everyone that uses these types of devices.' This is a case of, 'ONLY criminals and those around them have access to these specific devices, which were specifically developed to catch ONLY those criminals that we sold them to.'

There is really no privacy line to draw in this case.