It's always interesting reading reports on the US through a Chinese media perspective. Stories go round relatively regularly using very carefully selected snippets of news to paint a particularly negative portrait that isn't factually wrong, but so narrowly focused that it misses the overall picture (deliberately)

On the parts really stabbing into US communications monitoring, I suspect the reasoning is so the Chinese government can say "Look, it's even worse in the west!" to cover the extent of their own filters and monitoring (which most Chinese people are only vaguely aware of. Most of them take what they're told by the Chinese government as simple fact, and even when they can see the facts from a less biased perspective still refuse to accept it)