FISA Court Waited Until After Snowden Leaks To Actually Explore If Bulk Phone Record Collection Was Legal

One of the most common defenses of the NSA's bulk phone record collection (in which they get access to the record of basically every phone call in the US) is that the program has been reviewed and reapproved by the FISA Court every few months. Especially after the ruling by Judge Richard Leon calling the program unconstitutional, defenders of the program kept insisting that "every other judge" who reviewed the program had found it legal, with basically all of those other judges being the FISA court. Just yesterday, for example, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that "at least 15 judges on about 35 occasions have said that the program itself is legal." Except... that's not actually true.