To give you an idea of how plausible this is, I recommend reading the facts that came to light thanks to the work of Privacy International taking the UK governm

To give you an idea of how plausible this is, I recommend reading the facts that came to light thanks to the work of Privacy International taking the UK government to court. Here are some quotes from an article[0] written in 2018: > The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has reruled that GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 engaged in indiscriminate and illegal bulk cable-tapping surveillance for 15 years – and has once again refused to do anything about it. > By law the Foreign Sec cannot delegate that power and let, for example, the head of GCHQ decide what kind of data to grab or how much of it they wish to browse through. However, in practice, what was happening, the IPT ruled, was that the Foreign Sec rubber-stamped a "general direction" prepared by the spy agencies themselves that included a very broad form of words authorising them to do whatever they liked. > Sir Michael went as far as to say he was "disappointed that inaccurate information was given to the tribunal" about the number of contractors with admin privileges working at GCHQ. The agencies also had to amend their witness statements several times after it became obvious that their original contents, claiming they and the Foreign Secretary obeyed the law in full, were simply not true [0] https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/23/investigatory_powers_tribunal_gchq_15_years_illegal_surveillance_no_penalty https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/23/investigatory_powers_...