My cynical prediction is that the government will symbolically cave on bulk surveillance whilst doing a massive knowledge and expertise transfer to an ally with a populace not so troubled by surveillance. The process for searching through bulk data will just have an extra step where the US sends requests for intelligence data to their ally who can then lawfully search bulk communication data.
Indeed it's happened before. The Bush-era 'Total Information Awareness' program (someone really dropped the ball branding that one), got shelved supposedly, but in reality was changed or continued under different programs or names.
