“The CMS, however, undercuts these requests by letting the government access data in real time without individual requests.”
The ISPs weren’t blowing the whistle. They were complaining about having to give the government office space at their gateways when it already watches everything in real time from the Centralized Monitoring System. That system went in after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Nobody knows how much it gets used, and the government won’t say. The warrant process is decoration.