[higherpurpose]

That's why such reforms need to be accompanied by appropriate reductions in NSA's budget. If the NSA required $5 billion a year to sustain the bulk collection of phone metadata of most Americans, then its budget should be cut by $5 billion, if it's now supposedly "ended".

If the budget remains the same or even increases the following year, then clearly something is not right there and the NSA will just use that money to "keep" the program in some other place and through some other methods.

Unfortunately, since the "Defund the NSA" bill that almost passed the House after the first Snowden revelations, I haven't seen any discussion about doing that. The civil liberties organizations should've pushed for a similar law within 3 months afterwards and ensure it passes then.