WASHINGTON — Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced legislation on Tuesday to ban the U.S. government’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records and Internet data and narrow how much information it can seek in any particular search.

The bill, which has White House backing, goes further than a version passed in May by the U.S. House of Representatives in reducing bulk collection and immediately drew warmer response from privacy advocates and technology companies.

Revelations last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden prompted President Obama to ask Congress in January to rein in the bulk collection and storage of records of millions of U.S. domestic telephone calls.

Many American technology companies also have been clamoring for changes after seeing their international business suffer as foreign governments worried they would collect data and hand it over to U.S. spy agencies.

“If enacted, this bill would represent the most significant reform of government surveillance authorities since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act 13 years ago,” said Leahy, the democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor.

Leahy proposed greater limits on the terms that analysts use to search databases held by phone companies such as Verizon Communications Inc or AT&T Inc.

The bill, called the USA Freedom Act, would prohibit the government from collecting all information from a particular service provider or a broad geographic area, such as a city or area code, Leahy’s office said.

It would expand government and company reporting to the public and direct the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews intelligence collection inside U.S. borders, to appoint advocates on privacy and civil liberties issues.

The Information Technology Industry Council, with such members as Google Inc, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp and IBM Inc, said passing the bill would mean saving U.S. jobs dependent on an open Internet by “effectively putting an end to bulk collection.”