PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

Fri Jun 7 13:28:49 UTC 2013

On Fri, Jun 07, 2013 at 12:25:35AM -0500, jamie rishaw wrote:
> <tinfoilhat>
> Just wait until we find out dark and lit private fiber is getting vampired.
> </tinfoilhat>

Approaches like http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619
obviously don't scale to small time operators. But if you can vaccuum up
close to the core at full wire speed (and there is no reason to think
you can't, since there are switches which deal with that) you don't 
have to deal with periphery that much.

How would you tap a few TBit/s so that you can filter it down
to where you can look it at layer 7 in ASICs, and filter out
something to a more manageable data rate? Would you use a
dedicated fibre to forward that to a central facility, or 
do it with storage that is periodically picked up via sneakernet?