Can't the wallet.dat be encrypted already? (password when starting the bitcoin client...)
As has been said elsewhere, this wouldn't work, since the client has to somehow decrypt the file in order to use it. Decryption => a decrypted copy is stored in RAM => a clever program can find and copy it.
So this would be rather dangerous, since it would give users a false sense of security, prompting them to be even more careless. I know lots of users are whining right now and blaming the devs for not including encryption, but this is simply the truth of the matter.