The smart ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place. I think the OP's point that it may have sent them off the grid with paranoia is val

The smart ones never used such unsecured communications in the first place. I think the OP's point that it may have sent them off the grid with paranoia is valid. The weird thing is many of these folks have semi-normal lives. They might be using secure communications to talk about blowing something up but they also have their day to day lives of sending totally irrelevant e-mails to friends and family that perhaps were not secured. We already knew the CIA has used intercepted e-mail recipient lists to build social graphs of the fringes of these organizations. Identifying who is 2-3 steps removed from these organizations actually does have value especially to identify funding and support networks.