When I edit control points of closed surfaces or their edges, I always want to edit the points and edges on the visible side of the surfaces. Unfortunately, I always select the points and edges on the visible side and on the occluded (invisible) side. To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to restrict the selection to the visible side.
I believe that the shaded display mode should restrict the selection to the visible side. If you want to select all points or edges on both sides, you can use the wireframe display mode.
Another way to implement this feature is adding selection option to SnapToOccluded command.
