Just let that sink in for a minute.
The agency "analyzed networks with two degrees of separation (two hops) from the target", the report says. In other words, the NSA studied the online records of people who communicated with people who communicated with targeted individuals.
Contact chaining was considered off-limits inside the NSA before 9/11. In the 1990s, according to the draft IG report, the idea was nixed when the Justice Department "told NSA that the proposal fell within one of the Fisa definitions of electronic surveillance and, therefore, was not permissible when applied to metadata associated with presumed US persons".
It's almost certain that this metadata was for protocols other than SMTP and HTTP as well. Probably all netflows.
No. THEY WON.
I get your point, but it's a purely rhetorical one that has little to do with actual history. Al Qaeda had real objectives of their own, rather than simply existing to make us fearful.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#Beliefs_and_ide...
That said, if their goal was to bankrupt us & draw us out by a war of attrition - it's easy to say that they achieved their objective.