Most of the time conspiracy theories are hooey but yup, they absolutely were Right on this one

THE DATA WAS RIGHT THERE. IT WAS FUCKING OBVIOUS.

Isn't that exactly GCHQ's job though?

Hm. They may have taken certain actions that were slightly more all encompassing than you would expect. And shared information on a scale with other agencies you wouldn’t probably like. Especially now.

no mate, it's all legal now.

you wanna spike a cisco router mid transit? fine.

WHERE'S IT GOING? don't care.

And so the government is reduced to asking people nicely to please not use VPNs.

i wish that were true

not on the scale they did it. the UK is a major pipe between the US and Europe and they were just hoovering up absolutely fucking everything. even internal shit. the government made it retroactively legal. BECAUSE IT WAS NOT LEGAL.

gchq literally fucking put spiked routers in various places around the globe to hoover up data. jesus christ.

The most unrealistic thing in John le Carré is that the spies occasionally have moral qualms about what they're doing.