For my money, the most interesting part of the article is a little note at the end:

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office.

Why would the NSA refuse to run this past FISA? Why would they also refuse to get a letter of recommendation from the U.S.A.G.? Those are not unreasonable requests, and I'm left scratching my hairy lemur head, wondering why the folks in charge of the operation would balk at even the most basic level of oversight. As two posters have pointed out, the NSA was merely collecting times, phone numbers and names. Why would they be mulish about talking to the appropriate entities to get authorization?