The US government has a history of requesting extraordinary powers for extraordinary situations and never give them back. All the modern surveillance apparatus had its beginning during WW2. When the war was over, instead of pacifying the world, they immediately switched to create a cold war against a former ally to justify an even more expensive surveillance apparatus. With the end of former Soviet Union, instead of dismantling the surveillance industry, they started to create new enemies around the world, so people would be coerced to keep them employed against the interests of the population.