"Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died." It always leaves a bad tast

"Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died." It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that. The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and manage the data.