Frankly, I do not believe them on this. The ‘metadata’ is already stored by the vendors and if they need it they can get that from them with a FISA warrant.
They can even coerce some to the vendors to give them the feed directly - they have in the past. I also believe that even though they are looking for connections between foreign terrorists and Americans they even have the right to capture and examine everyone’s private communications. It’s fishing.
It just doesn’t wash. It didn’t wash with Clapper’s ‘inadvertent’ lie to Congress that he had to walk back, the need for a UTAH memory superhouse for call overhead data doesn’t wash, and the reauthorization of the Patriot Act under a new name (USA Freedom Act) that promulgates that national surveillance down to state and local LE levels doesn’t wash.
They’ve lost my trust and my believability regarding what they say now.
Frankly, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding as to how it works.
Real time access to the meta data is required to connect the dots so that you know you have need to seek the FISA warrant.
If you have to sort through stored data from a variety of vendors, it is likely you will never be able to make critical connections.
It is more complex than “A” talking to “B”, because it is likely “B” is talking to “C” to implement the task.