A future Conservative government would drastically reduce the size of the "Big Brother" state, the party has said.
Were they to win the election, the Tories would slash database projects and roll back the "snooping" powers given to officials.
In future, Whitehall departments would face tougher privacy rules to protect the individual against loss of their personal data, shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said.
Private information would only be shared on a "need to know" basis and for limited periods of time, he said.
Launching a policy paper entitled "Reversing the Rise of the Surveillance State," he accused ministers of trying to run government "robotically".
And he outlined a string of measures aimed at restoring "human judgment" to frontline public services.
They included: scrapping the National Identity Register, which will contain personal details of all ID card and passport holders, and ditching the ContactPoint database - which holds the names, dates of birth, schools and home addresses of all 11 million children in England.
Other ideas are: Rolling back the use of controversial RIPA powers by town hall officials to access personal communications data, and beefing up the powers and role of the privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner.
In addition, any new powers to share data between agencies or departments will require primary legislation - ensuring the opportunity for debate in the House of Commons.
Speaking to an invited audience at Microsoft's central London office, Mr Grieve said the "over-reliance" on the surveillance state was a "poor substitute" for human judgment.
