I'm British and I don't think you have been downvoted for merely holding an opinion, but rather for supreme arrogance combined with a complete ignorance of the realities of the situation.
Again, my posts here are "lost" on the typical HN sheep. The average Brit doesn't really care about GCHQ or Snowden or the fact we're wire tapping everything in sight. They. Just. Don't. Care.
The absolute peak of the Snowden story in the UK was when it was disclosed that some GCHQ "Spooks" took an angle grinder and baseball bat to some computers in the basement The Guardian headquarters. Mainly because it reminded them of some sort of comedy sketch. After that blew over and nobody cared anymore. That's why it's only tech publications like The Register seemingly carrying this more recent story.
The reaction in the UK was lacklustre, I believe, because privacy in the UK was already eroded a long time ago. For example you can't even walk 10 meters in London without being recorded on some CCTV system somewhere. Or drive more than a couple streets without your car's registration being recorded on police cameras.
I'm one of the few that actually 1) has an opinion 2) it happens to be contrary to the typical expected American view of "this violates a tiny amount of my privacy therefore let's burn it at the stake".
Fucking hell, you aren't just digging yourself a hole here, you're using state of the art high speed tunneling equipment to do it with. Any other assorted nuggets you care to enlighten us with before you get too deep for signals to reach the surface anymore?
