Of course there are wiretaps all over the backbone of the internet.

There isn't a single major network node (think in terms of "city" geographically speaking) in the US, for instance, which wouldn't have a tap on it. NSA tolerates about 3 days of downtime in case the tap itself is the cause of the outage. 14 years network engineering under my belt including a 7 year tenure at AT&T where I was a part of the backbone team - that's how I know.

The so-called "lawful intercept" oughtta be cancelled right the fuck away. Them lazy #ACAB and privacy invading stupidity (there's no "intelligence" involved) community idiots should be doing the hard work, not collecting bulk data and then having machine learning & AI algorithms dissect it for them.

It was one of the reasons I quit. The motherfuckers wouldn't leave me the fuck alone afterwards (5+ years of constant surveillance & harrassment, cost me all of my sats, LOL), so I'll gladly tell the public here & now in an uncensorable manner.