In secret... and illegally! There is a big difference between walking up to the front door and demanding cooperation from a business and covertly gaining access to those records. It is a several order of magnitude difference in effective ability to collect information about people
Having fourth amendment protections honored and respected means that the police can't just knock down the door of your business to search your records because of the remote possibility that someone that you do business with could be a terrorist.
Having a Patriot Act provision that says the the government doesn't need a constitutionally valid warrant to get business records is far far different than covertly collecting information via hacking or by purchasing the information. To have the freedom to choose companies that will honor their privacy agreements is itself an important step. To have the recourse to sue those companies when they voluntarily sell the government your private information in violation of your privacy agreement is important.
What is at stake is the government being able to walk into a company with a secret order demanding they hand over all the records the government wants without a constitutionally valid warrant. Having a law to point to that says companies can be forced to cooperate makes a big difference to the ease at which the government can collect mega data and conduct unconstitutional drag net surveillance.
Billions and billions of records about everyone's communications with which you can monitor their movements, their political affiliations and activism, monitor all their recorded financial transactions and purchases, determine their race, infer their sexual activity, and otherwise find exploitable personal weaknesses, affinities and affiliations en masse.
Oh and then put that in a giant database which is exploitable by America's adversaries.
Yes, this matters. Let the Patriot Act expire!