Reply #10: Uh, heads up, folks.

[boppers]

This kind of mass data gathering, retention, and analysis can't be created, deployed, and then utilized in only a few years.

Some recent players who have made the news: Verint's been around since 1994, Narus since 1997.

SIGINT, however, as a trade? Never stopped.

Background:
Some laws got passed making it illegal for the government to directly participate in a number of clandestine activities, but those laws didn't exactly have strong enforcement on a government entity using an outside contractor, who then used somebody else entirely, who then participated in a clandestine activity... as a private, non-governmental, entity.

Think "outsourcing to Blackwater", or "extraordinary rendition", only as applied to collecting phone calls, emails, websites visited, IRC chat logs, IM chats, etc.