Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other lawmakers today introduced legislation they say would provide more accountability and oversight of laws bolstering recently disclosed surveillance programs.

The proposal is not designed to halt the spying disclosed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

"The recent public revelations about two classified data collection programs have brought renewed attention to the use of government surveillance powers, which deserve close scrutiny by Congress," Leahy said in a statement. A Leahy spokeswoman declined comment.

Many lawmakers, however, already knew of thespying programs Snowden had leaked to the Guardian newspaper. A bi-partisan group of senators are also sponsoring the package, including Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mark Udall (D-Colorado), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Jon Tester (D-Montana).

"Particularly where Congress has authorized broad surveillance programs that implicate Americans' Fourth Amendment rights, oversight and transparency are essential," Lee said.

The proposal comes weeks after the Guardian disclosed that a secretive U.S. court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, issued a sweeping order under the Patriot Act requiring Verizon Business Services to give the National Security Agency a feed of metadata on all calls within the United States and between the United States and foreign countries on an "ongoing, daily basis" for three months – orders that have been issued for years and likely to all carriers.

One of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies. Lawmakers have repeatedly voted to prevent the act from expiring. The government only needs to show that the information pertains to an "authorized investigation." No connection to a terrorist or spy is required.

Under today's proposal, the act would be amended to require "the government to show relevance to an authorized investigation and a link to one of three categories of a foreign agent, power, or group." Another provision would demand the government "to provide a statement of the facts and circumstances" to the court to justify the surveillance, lawmakers said.

Among other things, the measure would also demand the government to produce an unclassified report on the "impact" the surveillance programs has "on the privacy of United States persons." It would also allow recipients of National Security Letters to challenge non-disclosure orders at any time, instead of a year's period.

Inspector General auditing would also be required, as would the formulation of methods for "minimization procedures for data collected under Section 215."

What's more, the proposal would require the FISA Amendments Act to expire in June 2015, instead of December 2017, when it is slated to sunset.

That FISA Amendments Act is relevant to Snowden's leak on the PRISM program. The act authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans' phone calls and electronic communications without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is believed outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted "to acquire foreign intelligence information."

The act generally requires the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rubber-stamp electronic surveillance requests. The government does not have to identify the target or facility to be monitored. The court's approval lasts for up to a year.

Snowden claimed that, under PRISM, the NSA had direct access into the servers of nine internet companies, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook, and it was collecting large volumes of data with the cooperation of these firms, including e-mail and audio and video traffic as well as documents.

The internet companies strongly denied that the NSA had direct connections to their servers or that they provided any data that was not part of a court order.