In 2004, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Landman Goldsmith, wrote at least two legal memos authorizing the program, "We conclude only that when the nation has been thrust into an armed conflict by a foreign attack on the United States and the president determines in his role as commander in chief ... that it is essential for defense against a further foreign attack to use the [wiretapping] capabilities of the [National Security Agency] within the United States, he has inherent constitutional authority" to order warrantless wiretapping—"an authority that Congress cannot curtail," Goldsmith wrote in a 108-page memo dated May 6, 2004. In March 2004, the OLC concluded the e-mail program was not legal, and then-Acting Attorney General James Comey refused to reauthorize it.

Note the last sentence here

This is important. The NSA employee named in this article Binny left the agency and became a whistleblower because he said the data they were collecting was unconstitutional.

Snowden also fled the country to reveal this exact program

Their narrative is that most of the cases were mistaken surveillance of takeout orders.

Basically they were doing the same thing the NSA does now only with murkier legality. DARPA invented it from their information awareness office. Check the official logo if you want a trip

It's probably nothing, but it just kind of stuck out given how much of their surveillance involved these so called pizza cases. I mean how often do you really call for takeout relative to all your phone calls, why would they keep hitting on "takeout orders" for the vast vast majority of their cases. Unless the pizza cases don't mean takeout orders, they mean they were conducting surveillance on the network of people responsible for this whole clusterfuck and when questioned that was their excuse