President Bush has decided not to renew a program of domestic spying on terrorism suspects, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday, ending a tactic criticized for infringing on civil liberties.

Gonzales said electronic surveillance will be subject to approval from a secret but independent court, which Democrats in Congress and other critics have demanded during more than a year of fierce debate.

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to get banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage in the United States, The New York Times said on its Web site on Saturday.

Citing intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the newspaper said the investigations, part of an expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering, also included CIA issuance of what are called national security letters to get access to financial records from U.S. companies.

The Bush administration seems determined to raise the specter of surveillance over every means of communication within the United States. Not content to monitor selected phone calls and e-mails in secret, it recently hinted that letters and packages may be opened without a search warrant too.

By gathering passenger data from commercial brokers in 2004 without notifying the passengers, the program violated a 1974 Privacy Act requirement that the public be made aware of any changes in a federal program that affects the privacy of U.S. citizens.

The Act could define as a terrorist act any activity causing a business classified as an “animal enterprise” to suffer a profit loss—even if such financial decline is caused by peaceful protests, boycotts, media campaigns or leafleting.