The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been revealed in a Guardian article to be tapping the fiber optic cables that carry most of the world's internet and telecom information. The two components of the operation are shamelessly titled "Mastering the Internet" and "Global Telecoms Exploitation," and the contents gleaned from this surveillance are being recorded and shared with Britain's allies including the US.
The revelations come from the same source as those concerning the NSA, namely Edward Snowden, and reveal what comes as no surprise to those familiar with the subject: That major intelligence agencies worldwide collaborate to engage in promiscuous, lawless electronic spying without control or accountability. So far the direct information only concerns the US and its allies, but the fact that intelligence agencies of both Russia and China do the same is beyond doubt.
According to the article, the British snooping operations are more extensive and less regulated than the US ones, reflecting Britain's often paradoxical status as both a highly-evolved parliamentary social democracy and a Byzantine security state. The UK is known for its ubiquitous CCTV systems monitored 24/7 by live personnel, and has had a remarkably advanced and unchecked security infrastructure with roots going back to the Imperial era.
The revelations underscore the nature of the problem not as being rot in a single government, but rather the technological "quickening" of world intelligence apparatuses that have never been held accountable for anything. No one was ever prosecuted for CIA's Cold War and War on Terror crimes, nor MI6's or MI5's, nor France's, definitely not China's, and the Russian FSB is almost the same institution as the KGB with basically the same people and a different acronym. France murdered a Greenpeace activist in a terrorist attack in 1985, and threatened New Zealand with economic sanctions if its henchmen were not released from jail. In other words, the current scandals are fruit of a long-running unsolved problem.
Basically the whole global intelligence environment is a vast pool of unfinished business and unpunished crimes. What this suggests is that societies must begin to rethink the classical approach to clandestine services, because secrecy breeds criminal minds and history has proven that these institutions cannot be held accountable. So, the underlying premise of their existence must be reexamined. There must be simpler solutions to the existence of hostile foreign intelligence agencies than to create one every bit as hostile to its own country. Our consent to the existence of these institutions becomes increasingly qualified the more they make it clear they consider humanity in general to be The Enemy. A mad dog is no use as a guard dog.
Just as an aside, the actual GCHQ building is almost from central casting as the scene of sinister high-tech shenanigans: