““The NSA and allies scamper through the plumbing of the internet like mice through the nooks and crannies of an old house. Huge slices of electronic traffic can be warehoused for days or even weeks. Powerful computers and ingenious algorithms can search for patterns and connections in a way that only recently would have seemed unimaginable.37 The outline of these efforts was already known before the Snowden leaks, even if the code-names and techniques were not.””