“The Drug Enforcement Administration collected massive amounts of telephone records for 20 years before the program was shuttered.”
It was never shuttered... It never stopped. Just the name of the operation was changed and it was handed off to other agencies.
That is true.
It is also true that the gov purchases commercially available marketing data from private companies and uses it for their purposes, the same as retailers and advertisers target and tailor advertising on apps and websites. Whether or not the phone service providers or smartphone manufacturers are cooperative, the info is available on the market.
Book by Byron Tau — “Means of Control: How the hidden alliance of tech and government is creating a new American surveillance state”