A House panel is expected to vote on a proposal Wednesday ending the National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata collection program.

The bill, called the USA Freedom Act, would remove the massive database of phone calling metadata from the NSA's hands. The plan would require the nation's spies to get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to access a terror target's phone-metadata records directly from the telcos.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), is expected to pass the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and move to the House floor, where it faces an uncertain fate. The plan also allows the NSA to demand that metadata from a target be expanded two degrees, or two hops. That greatly increases the number of people the NSA can eyeball beyond the original target. A similar version of the plan is pending before a Senate panel.

Privacy advocates, acknowledging the realpolitik, are supporting the measure because it's better than nothing. "I still hold out some hope that a stronger bill will emerge later," Lee Tien, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney, said via e-mail.

In a joint statement, Sensenbrenner and others hailed the measure. "Over the past several months, we have worked together across party lines and with the Administration and have reached a bipartisan solution that includes real protections for Americans’ civil liberties, robust oversight, and additional transparency, while preserving our ability to protect America’s national security," they said.

The proposal comes nearly a year after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden provided the Guardian with documents highlighting the NSA's phone surveillance program.

The bill contains at least three proposals supported by President Barack Obama, although the administration has not publicly endorsed the package. The president has said the FISC should sign off on data requests, that hops should be reduced from three to two. Obama added that the trillion-record-plus database should not remain in the government's control.

Under the plan, however, the standard by which the FISC would grant access to the metadata is not the same standard required under the Fourth Amendment.

The NSA does not need to meet the constitutional probable cause standard. Instead, the spy agency only needs to have "reasonable articulable suspicion" that a target is associated with a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

A competing measure to be voted on Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee would not require the FISC to sign off on the NSA's demands for metadata from the telcos.

The phone metadata includes the numbers of both callers, the duration and time of a call, international mobile subscriber identity numbers of mobile callers, and calling card numbers.