William Hague has branded allegations that the UK government's electronic surveillance centre, GCHQ, has been asking the US National Security Agency for data on UK citizens "nonsense" in comments made before a promised explanation later today.
Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander has vowed to challenge Hague on the accusations, which former foreign secretary Sir Malcom Rifkind said would be against the law unless ministers had approved such an information request.
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Hague has so far refused to confirm or deny whether GCHQ has had access to data procured by the US governments's so-called Prism programme, which was last week revealed to have been carrying out surveillance operations since 2010 on nine of the world's top internet firms, including Apple, Google and Facebook.
Speaking on BBC 1's Andrew Marr Show, Hague stated that "law-abiding" citizens have "nothing to fear" from GCHQ, doing nothing to dispel fears of covert government spying after the existence of a secret US court order over Verizon escalated into the current situation late last week.
It has emerged that the Prism "whistleblower" was a government contractor named Edward Snowden, a former CIA technician who has also worked for the NSA.
"I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," Snowden told the Guardian. "That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
