“....the system has been indefinitely shut down — but asked congress to extend its legal basis anyway. “
I think this is being portrayed as active use of this system against citizens whereas it says it is “indefinitely” shut down and so, I believe that they want the evidence held and not wiped until trials have been completed. FISA works both ways! :D
There are rumors that Customs & Border Protection has experienced a nationwide network crash and Newark Liberty Airport’s message at 1:39 PM - 16 Aug 2019 regarding the outage is given as an example.
https://twitter.com/EWRairport/status/1162463835388706817
That makes a lot of sense.