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 thatALOE 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.*