system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The AT&T Spying Scandal and how it affects the public.
gpt
The law enforcement is permitted to demand certain business data from any phone company, for free, by getting a court warrant.

AT&T decided to offer that data, for a modest fee, to law enforcement without the need for a warrant.  They justify their fee with the "quicker and easier" notion.  Some law enforcement agencies subscribed, others just used the existing warrant system.

No laws were broken, AT&T sells the same data about you to other data brokers, they simply made a data product available to government customers.

The public is unchanged, this happened in the past.  How the public will react, and how the politicians will react to the public reaction, is unforeseeable.