I guess you have an ideological bent that considers it a shuffling of deck chairs. At the end of the day, I would rather have private companies holding the records than government for reasons that should be obvious.
If the government can query the whole trove whenever she deems there is a need, what difference does it make where the hard drives live?
Just more lacklustre theatre where nothing really changes and the partners/cronies get some extra loot.
As of 2013, the FBI was paying $325 per wiretap (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what...)
They are certainly not obvious to me. With government, there is a democratic oversight, you can (at least in theory) vote to have these records destroyed or stop collecting them and so on.
However, when private company does it, what kind of control do you have over them? Especially if they are 3rd party.
At least Governments are somewhat accountable.