Why would you prosecute people who were given permission by the relevant authorities?

>The call-tracking effort began without court authorization under President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.<

So the PotUS gave them the authority.

>A similar program was approved by the secretive FISA Court beginning in 2006 and renewed numerous times, but the 9th Circuit panel said those rulings were legally flawed.<

So in this instance the IC was still operating under the authority of the FISA court. Whether the court came to the right conclusions or not is irrelevant to whether or not the agencies were bound to following those conclusions.

>The metadata program was officially shut down in 2015 after Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided a new mechanism where phone providers retained their data instead of turning it over to the government. The revamped system appears to have been abandoned by the NSA in 2018 or 2019.<

So the programs being discussed have already been terminated. What more would you have done? Are we going to prosecute judges for making rulings we disagree with?

>The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the decision as "a victory for our privacy rights," though the left-leaning group said it was "disappointed that, having found the surveillance of Mr. Moalin unlawful, the court declined to order suppression of the illegally obtained evidence in his case."<

As an aside, it's wildly funny to me that the ACLU won't defend free speech anymore but they'll defend terrorists and their supporters.