I think a more accurate description of it is: NSA was acting under the assumption that it was acting legally. The main criticism thrown at metadata collection w

I think a more accurate description of it is: NSA was acting under the assumption that it was acting legally. The main criticism thrown at metadata collection was that it was a 4th amendment violation. However, a straight forward look at US Supreme Court caselaw shows that it isn't a 4th Amendment violation. The NSA's interpretation was correct. What they overlooked was that the patriot act section 215, which they relied on for power to ask for metadata records, only allowed to them data related to an investigation. But they were preemptively getting all meta data totally unrelated to any investigation. So they created a new law to allow the NSA to collect targeted metadata. Which some privacy proponents believe is just as bad, but it's definitely more limited than what the NSA was doing before. It was never reasonable to believe that the NSA couldn't ever get your meta data. Police can get it for regular investigations too. They just can't get everyone's for no reason. IMO Snowden ended the bulk collection.