Well, this report to EFF happened in Jan 2006, and the Snowden/Prism leak happened in 2013, so at the time, it was in fact not "old news". I don't think Prism was even in operation until 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_disclosures

ECHELON pre-dates Prism by several decades