Wikileaks founder Julian Assange took time off from his sex-pest case to lift the kimono on his latest new project.

Wikileaks is publishing hundreds of files detailing a global industry that gives governments tools to spy on their citizens. It will show the activities of about 160 companies in 25 countries that develop technologies to allow the tracking and monitoring of individuals by their mobile phones, email accounts and internet browsing histories.

Assange said that the files documenting the reality of the international mass surveillance industry which now flogs equipment to dictators and democracies alike in order to intercept entire populations. In the last decade the industry had gone from something covert which provided gear to government intelligence agencies such as the NSA in the United States and Britain's GCHQ, to a huge transnational business.

The documents on the website, include manuals for surveillance products flogged to repressive Arab regimes, or allies as the US likes to calls them. They have come to light in part from offices ransacked during rebellions in countries such as Egypt and Libya earlier this year, as well as investigative work by WikiLeaks and its media and campaigning partners.