In older times intelligence agencies would follow suspects, build a file, keep track of them, build a case against them.
Now sometimes it seems to me like they want a contraption akin to Google to give them all what they need to do their job, sometimes one feels they don't want to get to work properly.
if the chaps manning drones have a 9 to 5 job, hey, why they shouldn't?
People should remember that Osama bin Laden's technology usage was minimal. Most likely meaningful communication happens face to face or via more conventional channels, only a complete moron would take the internet for anything secure now.
Anybody with a bit of technical acumen knew that the net isn't a safe communication medium and that it is easily infiltrated, by undermining the very fundamental of (very imperfect) secure communications the NSA and its UK counterpart have put a clear marker in place: don't use the internet.
Which is fine for actual terrorists, who already knew that, but is not fine for the rest of us, since now other kind of criminals very adept at exploiting the Internet have confirmation of how dumb the NSA is for undermining secure communications.
We as a society will be owned by a cracker in ways we haven't imagined yet, and the seed of that failure will be the NSA's cavalier attitude regarding people's privacy and appeal to security by obscurity (no matter how sophisticated the obscurity is) by undermining standards that should be as safe as practically possible.