Search engines (Google was funded by In-Q-Tel) aimed at searching and reading publicly accessible data. Then they moved to the "deep web" like email with Gmail, searching and reading less publicly accessible data.

Social media convinced people to publish on the web details of their personal life that they never would have voluntarily handed over to federal agents: political views, personal relationships, pictures of everywhere they've been, graphs of associates.

AI gets people to interactively divulge what they're working on and even to upload the files. It's the next step on a path from a past where intelligence agencies had to spy on people to a future where people pay for the privilege of volunteering everything to the intelligence agencies.