THE Foreign Office unlawfully gave British spooks the power to collect huge amounts of personal information from telecommunications companies for over a decade, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today.

Campaign group Privacy International has been involved in a long-running legal battle with the Foreign and Home Offices, GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 over the collection and retention of bulk communications data and bulk personal datasets.

Since the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, the Foreign Office has power to direct snooping agency GCHQ to obtain data from communications companies — but the tribunal found that that power was unlawfully delegated to GCHQ in “most” cases between 2001 and 2012, which gave it “unfettered discretion” as to what to request.