By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records.

This is an important detail that was not apparent from the court document that was leaked. However, there are significant questions that this raises, particularly as the individual who signed this statement told Congress in March that the NSA was NOT collecting data on millions of Americans.