President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA defended his proposal to create a "comprehensive, searchable" database of domestic personal records during confirmation proceedings Thursday.

But Rep. Mike Pompeo gave few specifics about his proposed repository of "publicly available financial and lifestyle information" and appeared to back off his call for legislation to allow for inclusion of domestic call records.

Several senators asked the Kansas Republican about the database proposal, outlined last year by Pompeo and attorney David Rivkin in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The editorial that became a focus of questioning says in part:

Collection of phone metadata under the Patriot Act was banned by Congress and finally ceased at the end of November. Collection of the contents of specific targets’ communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been dumbed down, with onerous requirements to secure the authorizing court order. The intelligence community feels beleaguered and bereft of political support. What’s needed is a fundamental upgrade to America’s surveillance capabilities.

Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed. That includes Presidential Policy Directive-28, which bestows privacy rights on foreigners and imposes burdensome requirements to justify data collection.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a longtime privacy advocate on the Senate intelligence committee, demanded to know details from Pompeo, who has for years had access to the opinions of spy agencies as a member of the House intelligence committee.

Perhaps surprisingly, given Pompeo's promulgation of the idea, he muffled his call to roll back privacy-minded reforms and de-emphasized his potential role in such an effort.

Though he would lead one of the largest U.S. intelligence agencies, the CIA's focus is abroad and large domestic data-collection historically has been done by the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"There are, of course, boundaries to this. First and foremost, they begin with legal boundaries that exist today. That [editorial] was talking about the U.S. government's obligation to do all it can in a lawful, constitutional manner to collect foreign intelligence important to keeping America safe," Pompeo said.

"You said collecting 'all metadata,'" Wyden interrupted.

"I still continue to stand behind the commitment to keep America safe by conducting lawful intelligence collection," Pompeo said. "I was talking about the metadata program that the USA Freedom Act has now changed in fundamental ways."

Pompeo voted in favor of the Freedom Act during its final passage by the House of Representatives. The bill's primary purpose was to end the automatic bulk collection and five-year retention of domestic call records, exposed in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden after years of approval from a secret surveillance court and knowledge of a small number of lawmakers.

Late changes to the Freedom Act caused many original backers to vote against the bill, which also was worded in a way that would ban resumed mass collection of Americans' email metadata, which was ended in 2011. The run-up to a final vote on the bill elicited confusing expressions of support, including from former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, who endorsed the law and resumed mass collection of email metadata.

Wyden, who before Snowden's disclosures elicited a factually incorrect claim from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about mass domestic collection, pressed Pompeo for his vision of what would not be entered into the "giant database."

"Today, that would be – in most instances, what you referred to, that would be unlawful under current law," Pompeo said. "As the director of the CIA, you have my assurance we will not engage in unlawful activity."

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., used his speaking time to ask Pompeo if his idea for increased record-collection was primarily geared to items voluntarily posted on social media sites.

"Look, the primary responsibility for that here in the U.S is not the CIA, it would be other agencies within the federal government," Pompeo said. "But, yes, I was referring to things that were in the public space."

Access to records from social media periodically has been controversial, with Twitter restricting access given by third-party tweet-analysis companies like Dataminr to government agents. The CIA was cut off last year from that service, which has a primary function of alerting users to breaking news events.

Though unmentioned at the hearing, the federal government has already put some information on "publicly available financial and lifestyle information" into databases. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, has bought credit information records to track the activities of up to 5 million Americans.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said during questioning that Pompeo would be familiar with effects of the Freedom Act, given his role on the House intelligence committee.

But Pompeo told Heinrich he would need to better understand intelligence programs before proposing specific legal changes.