While that's amusing, it's an imperfect summary of the problem. DOJ had the Patriot Act in a drawer before 9/11. The Patriot Act wasn't read in full by any member of the Senate before it was voted on. And Section 215 was grossly reinterpreted, by both Bush and Obama administrations, according to that section's author, Jim Sensenbrenner.

It's said NSA doesn't have a moral compass, it's basically the components of a chess set. It just does what it's told. So really some criticism goes to a lazy, unimaginative, or ignorant Congress for not fully understanding the Patriot Act and how administrations (especially the more suspicious elements within them) would interpret and use Section 215 to give credibility to what they want to do. And more criticism goes to the FBI for telling the NSA to engage in bulk collection and FISA court for permitting it, and by extension the president (both of them) mainly for leaving this program on autopilot and also defending it.

A task for historians, is to what degree each president really actively defended bulk collection and believed in its appropriateness, vs what was politically possible with the expectation a future court would become involved in unwinding something that president really didn't approve of but merely accepted.