Originally Posted by
uszkanni
Ask instead, for example, how much computing power you need to monitor a whole lot (ie, a nation's worth) of phone conversations (especially cell and sat) and apply word spotting software to pull out "interesting" conversations in real-time.
This is what I was talking about with the "Five Eyes"/AUSCANNZUKUS/ECHELON system. I'm no expert (in fact, VERY far from it) but I'd say the computing power required would have to be massive. Fair enough, it's a network not a supercomputer per se but it would still have to have incredible computing power.