The law of unexpected consequences

Situation: the US government admits to keeping records of phone calls within the USA. The expected outrage, debate duly occurs.

Problem: the defendant in a criminal case thinks that phone records can exonerate him, but the phone company (MetroPCS, who seem to be a bunch of clowns) have misplaced the records for the month in question.

Solution: just ask the NSA for their copy:

Accordingly, he is seeking the records from one resource that has stored every call from every citizen: the National Security Agency (NSA). After all, the Administration has admitted the existence of the storage and program. After that, Dore is arguing that it is just another government agency with material evidence. Indeed, the NSA wanted a complete record of all calls to store and it is now being called upon to hand over material evidence in its possession.

The article's author doesn't think much of the defendant's chances, but I'm not so sure. It's a matter of public record that the NSA has this data, and if MetroPCS would have been compelled to turn it over to the defendant then there's no obvious reason why NSA can't be so compelled, unless they can carry some form of "unduly burdensome" argument. This has the potential to be an extra-large-popcorn-bucket event.