The article is good but it doesn't dismantle the argument either, it clarifies it. That's nice and all, but ProPublica makes as many guesses about what possibly

The article is good but it doesn't dismantle the argument either, it clarifies it. That's nice and all, but ProPublica makes as many guesses about what possibly could be done using only non-phone metadata sources as NSA makes guesses about the absolute need for it. Remember that the U.S. Intelligence Community "could have" been tipped off to 9/11 beforehand, but it didn't happen. ProPublica saying that FBI "could have" caught an email or that a magical court order to divulge U.S. phone numbers calling al-Shabab in Somalia "could have" found Basaaly Moalin in San Diego is pure speculation too, and doesn't exactly jive well with the historical evidence that the Intelligence Community finds it difficult to identify plots beforehand. As far as your opportunity to dissent, you've had it and continue to have it. Unless you think every governmental action should be put to mass referendum then you go through your elected representative. After all the phone metadata program was specifically baked into public law several times over in the past decade, and it was done so by our representatives. It didn't simply appear out of nowhere.