No, that's actually the bread and butter of intelligence work. At least it was in HUMINT, if not in SIGINT. You identify individual(s) with access to what you need and then work on/with them. This is not surprising or even controversial (mind you, I am not in any way in favour of such things, just playing the devil's advocate a bit) at all. Hard evidence of dragnet, massive, all encompassing surveillance really is the new revelation that has come out of Snowden leaks including this one. Targeting of individuals (especially if they're foreigners) was always going on.