Thus, the government takes the position that the metadata
  collected – a vast amount of which does not contain
  directly “relevant” information, as the government
  concedes – are nevertheless “relevant” because they may
  allow the NSA, at some unknown time in the future,
  utilizing its ability to sift through the trove of
  irrelevant data it has collected up to that point,
  to identify information that is relevant.

Just dripping with hubris! I am just gobsmacked at the audacity of such a claim.