By LE capable firmware you mean that the FBI had a backdoor to eavesdrop? Wow.
[0] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/fe...
I can't imagine much useful material comes from wiretapping these days. Maybe once in a while, but the real value largely exists in the application layer, which is obtained in a different way.
Foreign-hosted services seem like they'd be hard to crack, but it's extremely likely their data flows though Cloudflare, Amazon, GCE, or a similar US-based company.
> The surveillance is performed through the use of wiretaps on traditional telecommunications and Internet services in voice, data, and multiservice networks. The LEA delivers a request for a wiretap to the target's service provider, who is responsible for intercepting data communication to and from the individual. The service provider uses the target's IP address or session to determine which of its edge routers handles the target's traffic (data communication). The service provider then intercepts the target's traffic as it passes through the router, and sends a copy of the intercepted traffic to the LEA without the target's knowledge.
Responding to lawful warrants and subpoenas is everyone’s obligation, and has been for hundreds of years under American law, and English law before that. The government is entitled to almost any evidence—it just has to follow the proper process to get it. Lawful intercept just supports that process. That’s also why the FBI having access to US data is fundamentally different than Chinese back doors in US networks. US law enforcement has legal ways to access data flowing in networks to perform their legitimate law enforcement functions. The Chinese have no legitimate reason to access data in US networks.
First of all PRISM was not purely "a system for handling paperwork for lawful intercepts", see [0].
Second your assertion assumes that somehow all requests within these programs abided by "lawful purpose", which we also know is not true. Whether FISA rubber stamps were lawful is subjective and your opinion but not fact. Your answer purports a black and white perspective on the past which I simply don't find appropriately represents all the shades of grey presented by all of the legal angles during this time.
[0] https://dzone.com/articles/nsa-prism-%E2%80%93-mother-all-bi...
[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/20/public_advocate_fbi...
[1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surv...
Just because it was never settled that way doesn't change the history of it.
You could have made the argument you were trying to make colorably and defensibly. All you had to do was not try to sound like you'd been "read in" to NSA's SIGINT programs. But, like I said above: you managed to cite one of the few NSA program examples that is in fact totally banal and, ironically, an almost perfect example of lawful intercept.
As I said above: it's not hard to come up with cases where NSA is doing things that appear to contravene US law, but you managed to cite the one instance where all they're managing is paperwork.
Law enforcement still had to go to a judge, get a court order, and take it to the ISP. The ISP could then configure the devices to siphon off traffic from a single customer to a collection device.
The same functionality and process has existed in phone networks basically since they became electronically switched.
Remember the context of my conversation was 2010-2011 which was pre-Snowden. It's likely state, local and national agencies have less of an interest, today, at route/switch infrastructure simply because of the post-Snowden crypto push.
[0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvp8ga/the-fbi-wants-to-w...
It was later discovered the NSA capability was the direct result of tapping fiber optic cables between international data centers, nothing to do with lawful intercept capabilities.