Ever since the first Snowden leaks about the way the NSA interpreted Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to allow it to collect all call records from various telcos, one of the key arguments that has been made by the program‘s defenders is that it was necessary to have every single call record to make the important connections between terrorists. Multiple officials have argued that to find the „needle in the haystack“ they need to be able to collect the whole haystack. In fact, that was part of the argument made by the few judges who have reviewed and approved this program. In the very first FISC ruling that actually analyzed the legality of the program (as opposed to earlier approvals that never bothered with an analysis), the court clearly indicated that it was necessary to collect everything: