I remember the face of one guy after we chatted about lawful interception over a couple of drinks. He was visibly shaken like he has seen the hell through the door just opened before him.

These kinds of infrastructure is present everywhere, for a very long time. Just because not everyone is talking about the matter doesn't make it non-existent.

For example, in 2003, I saw how Japan monitored their network traffic in real time. It was eye opening for me, too. Technologies like DPI which required beefy servers are now trivial to implement with the right hardware.

This is all I can say.