The (now open) secret is the NSA possess those records on hard drives and in a database, but that those records are (via a legal fiction) "uncollected" until a

The (now open) secret is the NSA possess those records on hard drives and in a database, but that those records are (via a legal fiction) "uncollected" until a query is made that returns those records. And if the NSA wants to return those records from a query, a user needs to fill in the field alongside the request with a good justification, and (most of the time) that query is logged. I don't think there is any dispute that such records actually exist.