> It's been there since the mid 90s
Actually, things have been tapped as long as there's been anything TO tap. James Bamford's first history of the NSA, the Puzzle Palace, came out in in 1983; here's a long passage about Western Union turning over all coded telegram traffic to the USG in World War II. Duncan Campbell revealed ECHELON in 1988 and came out with "Interception Capabilities 2000", a report to the EU Parliament, in 1999.
See also: a three-minute clip of two DoD consultants discussing pervasive surveillance/big data keyword mining in the service of suppressing dissidents in 1968. Nothing new indeed.