Right, but the purpose of the brief is to refute the government's expected argument that the program is necessary to catch terrorists.
Wyden & co. are trying to show in each case that the intelligence would have been available by other means.
This is important because it tends to undermine both the government's statutory interpretation argument (that all call records are "relevant" for these investigations) and maybe the 4th amendment argument (if collection of metadata is a search, then search is "reasonable").
Wyden & co. are trying to show in each case that the intelligence would have been available by other means.
This is important because it tends to undermine both the government's statutory interpretation argument (that all call records are "relevant" for these investigations) and maybe the 4th amendment argument (if collection of metadata is a search, then search is "reasonable").