By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Broad U.S. government powers to collect personal data on Americans, such as travel and financial records, would be curtailed under a bill expected to win approval on Wednesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mostly framed so far as dealing with bulk collection of domestic phone call data, the bipartisan USA Freedom Act addresses activities much broader than phone calls, said government officials and private experts.
For instance, they said, the FBI has used the USA Patriot Act, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and court rulings to gather records of hotel stays and international wire transfers by companies such as Western Union.
Under the USA Freedom Act, such powers would remain in place, but investigators' data-collections power would be narrowed to cases where the government sets out tightly targeted "specific selection terms."
"The big news in the USA Freedom Act is to limit bulk collection programs," said Peter Swire, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Swire served on a review commission appointed by President Barack Obama after privacy disclosures two years ago by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.
"One (court) order would no longer authorize a bulk collection program, whether for telephone metadata or for other purposes," Swire said.
The Freedom Act's prospects in the Senate were uncertain. Debate on it was being driven by the impending June 1 expiration of portions of the Patriot Act, which officials say includes key counter-terrorism tools. The Freedom Act would curb the NSA's power to collect and store huge quantities of U.S. telephone call data.
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, want the original Patriot Act extended through 2020, rather than reduced in scope by the Freedom Act.
On Wednesday, Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters the problem with current practices is spy agencies have access to too little data, not too much. He predicted a new round of congressional sparring that could further stall reforms.
Obama administration officials have expressed support for the Freedom Act and its reforms and said the president would be willing to sign it into law.