Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include - without court approval - certain types of physical searches of U.S. citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic congressional officials and other experts say.

The dispute illustrates how Democrats, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought. It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the basic meaning of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language.