There are two axis that seem to matter, by my way of thinking, whether this business is conducted via carrier pigeons or fiber optic cables. 1. What is the pro

There are two axis that seem to matter, by my way of thinking, whether this business is conducted via carrier pigeons or fiber optic cables. 1. What is the process. What requests come from the government. What government entities make those requests. What entities within the internet companies process those requests. What parts of the request handling are done by humans with decision-making authority vs what parts are handled by machines or by humans following a rigid script. In either case, what policy drives those decisions. What proportion of the requested information is given or denied. 2. What is the speed and scale of the process How quickly are these requests fulfilled. How much data comes back from a request. What proportion of this data is relevant to the target and the investigation vs “incidental”. How many requests are there per month or per year. How much data is gathered per month or per year. Side-issues not covered above: Is the access “direct”. Is there a “back door”. Is access given to “servers”. Is access given to a “network”. Is there a “beam splitter”. Is the government provided with a private or secret “key”. There are many ways to construct such a system, and there are many ways to describe it (nevermind flat-out lie about it) by carefully parsing these side-issues. What matters is not the implementation details but the effect.