It was illegal then and it's illegal now. The circuit court didn't say "as of May 7th, 2015 this is illegal"; they said that the NSA exceeded the scope of surveillance authorized by Congress in October of 2001.

That isn't relevant to him having to lie to an open commission about a top secret program they already knew about.

You claimed the metadata collection program was "written about at length" and viewed as "OK". This is evidence from the judicial branch of the US government it is not, in fact, viewed as okay.