A federal judge ruled that the NSA's collection of phone records is lawful.

This directly contradicts another judge who ruled it was an Orwellian violation of 4th amendment. Either or both could be overruled on appeal.

The reference to the September 2001 attacks is mistaken, because we know for a fact that phone surveillance would not have been necessary for preventing the attacks if the US government had been paying attention. The US government had various warnings, including the flight student that wasn't interested in learning to land the plane, but ignored them. Dubya had told the FBI to reduce the resources into counterterrorism.

It is also irrelevant as a reason. If the state were allowed to monitor everything and search everything, it could prevent many kinds of crimes, as well as many kinds of dissent and whistleblowing, but that doesn't invalidate the 4th amendment.