[tjohns]

That's not really news. It's mandated by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which is a law dating back to 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Some enterprise network gear even has CALEA modules built in to facilitate traffic intercepts. For example, here's some docs from both Mikrotik and Cisco:

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/CALEA

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6...