For those that are seeing this for the first time:
Understand that ALL data is collected and stored. Every phone call, every e-mail, what you browse, how long you look at a photo - is recorded about YOU, where you travel (your phone) who you are in proximity to (their phone).
There are collection and analytics systems set up and maintained by the NSA. (Search out "Bill Binney Thin Thread" - he is the NSA official who helped design the collection and analytics system that gathers all of this data and maps the 'threads' between).
In addition to the NSA's system, the CIA has their own, DIA as well; and private companies such as Google which are doing it in (coordinated) piece meal fashion (hence Hunter Biden's email comment about retaining a firm that can find info beyond what is revealed by a simple Google search, remember too A) Google's relationship with DARPA and B) Silicon Valley & esp Eric Schmidt / Google built China's Social Credit System); and then there is this rogue system created at the behest of Brennan - HAMMER.
Snowden - good guy? Bad guy? We don't know. Someone built a switch to syphon off that data.