It was every day. They didn’t say 17,000 new numbers every day, they said this:
According to intelligence officials, this FISA court opinion focuses on the NSA’s use of an "alert list" which is a list of "phone numbers of interest" that they queried every day as new data came into their phone records database.
The EFF are very careful with details.
On topic: My guess is that Crovitz is a paid shill for the TLAs or the government is paying journalists to write stories that pour water on their devastatingly damaging NSA revelations.
