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Supporters and critics of the legislation agree that the USA Patriot Act gave law enforcement sweeping new powers to investigate and prosecute terrorism-related as well as more garden-variety criminal activities.
Some of its provisions are due to expire this year, and the White House and most Republicans have been pressing to expand the law rather than modify it.
Feingold was the only senator who voted against the legislation. With both the House of Representatives and the Senate controlled by Republicans, his latest amendments face an uphill battle.
However, the liberal senator is not alone. Many civil liberties and human rights groups have vigorously opposed sections of the law, particularly those targeted in the Feingold legislation.
Feingold's proposal would narrow the circumstances in which a delayed warrant can be granted to the following: potential loss of life, flight from prosecution, destruction or tampering with evidence, or intimidation of potential witnesses.
"The 'catch-all provision' allowing a secret search when serving the warrant would seriously jeopardise an investigation or unduly delay a trial can too easily be turned into permission to do these searches whenever the government wants," Feingold said.
It would also require a public report on the number of times that section 213 is used, the number of times that extensions are granted, and the type of crimes being investigated.
Feingold's second bill, which was co-sponsored by nine other democratic senators, deals with Sections 215 and 505 of the law.
"The current law allows the FBI broad, almost unfettered access to personal information about law-abiding Americans who have no connection to terrorism or spying," he said.
"The FBI could serve a subpoena on a library for all the borrowing records of its patrons or on a bookseller for the purchasing records of its customers simply by asserting that they want the records for a terrorism investigation. Since the passage of the Patriot Act, librarians and booksellers have become increasingly concerned by the potential for abuse of this law."
"The American people do not know how many or what kind of requests federal agents have made for library records under the Patriot Act. The Justice Department refuses to release that information to the public," he added.
The Feingold proposal would restore a pre-Patriot Act requirement that the FBI make a factual, individualised showing that the records sought pertain to a suspected terrorist or spy while leaving in place other Patriot Act expansions of this business records power.
Section 217, Feingold said, "was intended to target only a narrow class of people -- unauthorised cyberhackers. It was not intended to give the government the opportunity to engage in widespread surveillance of computer users without a warrant."
Section 217 is one of the provisions due to "sunset" at the end of 2005.
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