TOP SECRETHCOMINTHORCON,NOFORN—
UNITED STATES
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Docket Number: PR/TT
MEMORANDUM OPINION
‘This matter is before the Court upon the government’s application to re-initiate in
expanded form a pen register/trap and trace (PR/TT) authorization for the National Security
Agency (NSA) to engage in bulk acquisition of metadata! about Internet communications. The
government's application also seeks Court authorization to query and use information previously
obtained by NSA, regardless of whether the information was authorized to be acquired under
When used in reference to a communication, “metadata” is information “about the
communication, not the actual communication itself,” including “numbers dialed, the length of a
call, internet protocol addresses, e-mail addresses, and similar information concerning the
delivery of the communication rather than the message between two parties.” 2 Wayne R.
LaFave, Jerold H. Israel, Nancy J. King & Orin S. Kerr, Criminal Procedure § 4.6(b) at 476 (34
ed. 2007),
FOP SECRETHCOMINTHOREONNGFERN—prior bulk PR/TT orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC or “Court”) or
exceeded the scope of previously authorized acquisition. For the reasons explained herein, the
government's application will be granted in part and denied in part.
1 History of Bulk PR/TT Acquisitions Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillan
Fron 85.5 s:2s authorized, under a series of FISC
orders under the PR/TT provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 50
U.S.C. §§ 1841-1846, to engage in the bulk acquisition of specified categories of metadata about
Internet communications. Although the specific terms of authorization under those orders varied
over time, there were important constants. Notably, each order limited the authorized acquisition
to EES cotegories of metadata.’ As detailed herein, the government acknowledges thatALOE SE CIECOAU ES HOR C GR GORA
NSA exceeded the scope of authorized acquisition continuously during the more chan
of acquisition under these orders.
In addition, each order authorized NSA analysts to access the acquired metadata only
through queries based on validated “seed” accounts, ie., Intemet accounts for which there was a
reasonable articulable suspicion (“RAS”) that they were associated with a targeted intemational
terrorist group; for accounts used by U.S. persons, RAS could not be based solely on activities
protected by the First Amendment.’ The results of such queries provided analysts with
information about the| | contacts and usage for a seed account, as reflected in the
collected metadata, which in turn could help analysts identify previously unknown accounts or
persons affiliated with a targeted terrorist group. Sce EIN Opinion at 41-45, Finally,
each bulk PR/TT order included a requirement that NSA could disseminate U.S. person
information to other agencies only upon a determination by a designated NSA official that itis
related to counterterrorism information and is necessary to understand the counterterrorism
information or to assess its importance.*