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From: "Justin M. Streiner" <streiner@cluebyfour.org> Aside from all of the business and legal sticking points that others have mentioned, there are also the technical aspects of capturing, storing,

On Thu, May 24, 2012 7:36 pm, Jay Ashworth wrote: transporting, analyzing, and managing those packets, and the appliances that do the heavy lifting. As your traffic grows, that problem scales 1:1 linearly, at best, and more likely n:1 linearly, or worse. The added overhead of the infrastructure needed to support this will also make

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it more difficult to be price-competitive with your peers. TL:DR; The reasons for doing this on any kind of general basis have to be *EXCEPTIONALLY* compelling to make a business case for it, apart from any possible legal ramifications. I used asterisks *and* capital letters; that's about an order of magnitude. Don't forget staffing.

I am a little surprised no one has referenced Wired's recent article about Libya's Internet Surveillance systems: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/ff_libya/all/1 It's good reading and I think does a good job of summarizing both the technical challenges but also the political implications of such a system. -Keith