Paul Revere's observation of events happening and reporting back in his own words isn't a great analogy. A better one would be to intercept all stagecoaches at their midway points across the entire United States, and manually copy verbatim the letters they carry in case one day we want to know what Jack said to Joe.

Yes, the passing of "information" is not new. But I believe the intercepting of mail, copying and then letting the original letter through to its destination without a warrant is illegal. (Isn't it?)