Internet keeps its own records. Data mining is an ultramodern technical tool that an intelligence agency would naturally employ. Now that even telephone, TV and radio are going digital, it would require a deliberate effort to avoid keeping content records. If the NYT is worried about a focus on a few hundred individuals, they are missing the big picture.
With the ability to monitor EVERYTHING, it might become more difficult to monitor specific individual targets. Information overload.
"If the NYT is worried about a focus on a few hundred individuals, they are missing the big picture."
Yes. The killer issue for the next decade is privacy. And in the united States conservatives have been forced to argue against a right to privacy because somehow privacy has been interpreted to meaning it's ok to kill you unborn baby.
We need to de-link those issue - privacy should not be defined as including the right to abortion but the right to be left alone (i.e. privacy) is a fundamental conservative ideal.