Comment by betterunix

Sadly, this probably would not hold up in court, if the government ever tried to challenge it (why would they, though? The last thing they want is a ruling against them; better to just threaten ISPs with more regulation). On the other hand, a company might get away with a plausibly inadvertent side channel e.g. something like this:

http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcoms-gaming-lag-hints-spying-...

"Your honor, we went above and beyond the law, creating a special system for handling lawful surveillance requests by the FBI and NSA. Unfortunately, the expanding volume of surveillance requests has overwhelmed this system, resulting in unintentional increases in latency experienced by surveillance targets. Our technical support staff is developing a solution..."