Hervé Morin, the defence minister, broke ranks to join an army of associations, the main judges' union, civil liberty groups, unionists and opposition figures all opposed to Edvige - the acronym for the computer system.

Edvige, also a woman's Christian name, was created by decree in July to collect information on anyone aged 13 or above who is "likely to breach public order".

But it can also list anyone in politics or trade unions or with a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions.

"Surely this is a curious mix-up of categories," said Mr Morin, a centrist party MP who joined President Nicolas Sarkozy's "rainbow" cabinet last year.

"Is it useful to gather data such as telephone numbers, sexual orientation, and details of taxes and assets and the like without knowing exactly what the point is?"

Mr Morin was firmly rebuked by the prime minister François Fillon.

"I don't think it is necessary to create suspicion when none exists and I had the occasion to tell him so," he said.

Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, who is tasked with pushing through Mr Sarkozy's tough law-and-order agenda that helped him win last year's presidential election, was equally vociferous.

"It is odd that Mr Morin has not managed to find my telephone number. I would have set his mind at rest," she said.

Edvige, according to the government, is simply a spruced-up version of a file system already used by the Renseignements Généraux (RG), a police intelligence service which civil liberties groups claim has files on 20 million people.

The RG has spied on French citizens since it was founded by Napoleon Bonaparte's police chief, Joseph Fouché and was merged this year with the DST, France's MI5 responsible for counter-espionage and anti-terrorism.

Edvige is to be the tool of the new merged agency called the DCRI (Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence).

The campaign to dump Edvige - dubbed "Sarkozy's Big Sister" by the French press - began after France's data privacy watchdog, the National Commission on Information Technology and Freedom (CNIL), obliged the government to go public on the system.

Since then, the anti-Edvige revolt has gathered pace. More than 120,000 people have signed a petition to have it dropped and more than dozen lawsuits have been filed against it at the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest civil court.

Unionists and left-wing groups were the first to complain.

Laurence Parisot, the head of the Medef employer's union, has demanded an "explanation" from the interior ministry while Michel Pezet, a former member of the CNIL agency, described the system as an "electronic Bastille".

"There is nothing to be worried about," countered Brice Hortefeux, minister for immigration and national identity.

"Today there's a debate. Complaints have been filed, let them be examined."