That's the part I disagree with. Given sufficient resources, that huge miasma of meta data out there could be sorted and cross-referenced in all sorts of ways. Sense can be made out of it. Sure, in the end that analysis is subject to human review, with its frailties, but the data itself can be worked with, because we do have the resources. The Russians probably don't, but who knows?
OK then, how come the plans for the Boston Marathon terror attack was not sifted out of this data? (NSA had been fully operational by then.)