PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

[alex at corp.nac.net (Alex Rubenstein)]

> 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.

Remember, there is no core. I say that half-jokingly.

Sniffing at the core will only net you a small set of potentially asymmetrical traffic flow.