“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the government’s motion to limit access by the NSA to the bulk telephone records provided by US telephone companies. Under the new rules, the government cannot “query” the telephone metadata until after the court finds that there is a “reasonable, articulable suspicion that the selection term is associated with” a terrorist organization. The new rules also limit query results to telephone numbers within “two hops” of the selector. President Obama announced the new legal requirement during his recent speech on surveillance reform, when he committed to end the NSA’s bulk record collection program. The NSA’s authority to force US telephone companies to turn over records on all their customers will expire on March 28th. The President has recommended that the Intelligence Community and the Attorney General propose an alternative to the bulk collection program prior to that deadline. For more information, see EPIC: FISC and EPIC: NSA Verizon Phone Record Monitoring.”