You don't really need a special (and clearly suspicious) IP address to perform driftnet fishing. All you need is to be sure that all physical packets pass through a checkpoint charlie and just park a sniffer there to watch everything fly by. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see how hard NSA pushes behind the scenes to have physical long distance cables run through the US routers/switches (in the name of US national security, of course). It would be fun (perhaps horrible) to see what the NSA does the first time Isreal or France set up their own high capacity long distance to other friendly/unfriendly countries (thus bypassing the US completely). Second, let France or some other country set up major Internet routing clearinghouses which advertise secure routes to other nations (not US). Ern