WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed a bill that would strengthen court oversight of the government's surveillance program but not grant legal immunity to telecommunication companies that helped in the program.

    With a vote of 227 in favor and 189 against, House Democrats pushed the bill through, in defiance of President George W. Bush's earlier threat to veto any legislation that does not provide telecom companies with legal immunity.

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Democrat, urged the Bush administration to first give Congress access to classified documents specifying how the telecom companies were involved in the surveillance program.

    The Bush administration has demanded that authorities monitor foreign communications with Americans without first applying for court warrants, as long as the American intelligence service is not the intended target of surveillance.

    By contrast, the newly passed bill requires that the government can only conduct surveillance on telephone calls and e-mails of foreign intelligence targets that are likely to be in contact with people inside the United States after it gets special court authorization.

    The special authorization is called a "blanket" or "umbrella" warrant that would let the government obtain a single order to authorize the surveillance of multiple targets, but Republicans criticized the warrant for impeding security agents' abilities to collect intelligence about terrorist suspects.