GCHQ involved in mass, unrestricted surveillance of the UK, according to Privacy International documents

GCHQ has been building a database of personal information on almost everyone in the UK for 15 years - with successive governments' support

Privacy International has released a tranche of documents that show how spy agency GCHQ has been gathering a huge database of personal information and communications - with the full approval of government since at least 2005.

Campaign group Privacy International says that the stash of documents goes back to 1998, and includes details and memoranda about a range of information, including passports and text messages. Most of the personal information it has collected, it admits in the documents, are of no operational value.

"The papers released today act as proof of, and show the sheer scale of, British intelligence agency surveillance of our personal data," claimed the organisation. "It goes far beyond monitoring our text messages, email messages and social media posts. The intelligence agencies have secretly given themselves access to potentially any and all recorded information about us."

It continued: "The documents reveal the potential to requisition medical records and confidential information shared with a doctor (including blood group, physical characteristics (hair/eye colour), biometrics, travel records, financial records, population data, commercial data (details of corporations and individuals involved in commercial activities), regular feeds from internet and phone companies, billing data or subscriber details, content of communications (including with lawyers, MPs or doctors) and records from government departments."

Privacy International said that there are hundreds of millions of records at GCHQ's disposal. Computing has asked GCHQ for its response to the release but it hase not yet responded. Privacy International, however, has been much more forthright.

"The information revealed by this disclosure shows the staggering extent to which the intelligence agencies Hoover up our data. This highly sensitive information about us is vulnerable to attack from hackers, foreign governments and criminals," said Millie Graham Wood, legal officer at Privacy International.

"The agencies have been doing this for 15 years in secret and are now quietly trying to put these powers on the statute book for the first time in the Investigatory Powers Bill, which is currently being debated in Parliament.

"These documents reveal a lack of openness and transparency with the public about these staggering powers, and a failure to subject them to effective Parliamentary scrutiny."

The disclosures today provoked swift condemnation from many quarters in the IT industry, who believe that overbearing secret services are undermining the sector.

"The UK government and its intelligence agencies are watching UK citizens as if they were criminals," said Jacob Ginsberg, senior director at email encryption firm Echoworx.

He continued: "This kind of cyber surveillance is no different to old-school wiretapping. However, a wiretap may be approved by a court only if evidence of reasonable suspicion can be found.

"The government should not be allowed to circumvent existing laws that have been put in place to protect law-abiding citizens from potentially harmful intrusion.

"Having the power to sweep someone's phone records, financial data, medical records and internet communications without a warrant during bulk data collection is morally wrong."

The Privacy International release conforms with earlier information released via the Edward Snowden leaks - but goes much further in demonstrating how widespread and intrusive GCHQ's surveillance and information-gathering has become.

Computing will report the official response from GCHQ and government over these disclosures when we receive it.

At the same time that GCHQ has been building its database of personal information of the UK population, it admits that it has been losing the cyber security battle - on which it has spent at least £1bn.