Facing Data Deluge, Secret U.K. Spying Report Warned of Intelligence
   Failure

     97 percent of the calls, messages, and data the program had
     collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.

   "The amount of data being collected, however, proved difficult for MI5
   to handle. In March 2010, in another secret report, concerns were
   reiterated about the agency’s difficulties processing the material it
   was harvesting. “There is an imbalance between collection and
   exploitation capabilities, resulting in a failure to make effective use
   of some of the intelligence collected today,” the report noted. “With
   the exception of the highest priority investigations, a lack of staff
   and tools means that investigators are presented with raw and
   unfiltered DIGINT data. Frequently, this material is not fully assessed
   because of the significant time required to review it.”
   The problem was not unique to MI5.
   Many of the agency’s larger-scale surveillance operations were being
   conducted in coordination with the National Technical Assistance
   Centre, a unit of the electronic eavesdropping agency Government
   Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ.
   The Centre plays a vital but little-known role. One of its main
   functions is to act as a kind of intermediary, managing the highly
   sensitive data-sharing relationships that exist among British
   telecommunications companies and law enforcement and spy agencies.
   Perhaps the most important program the Centre helps deliver is
   code-named PRESTON, which covertly intercepts phone calls, text
   messages, and internet data sent or received by people or organizations
   in the U.K. who have been named as surveillance targets on warrants
   signed off by a government minister.
   A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the
   PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications.
   Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had
   collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.
   The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly
   focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was
   monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial
   intelligence could have been missed.
   “Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted.
   “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”
   In full:
   [1]https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveillance-dat
   a-deluge/
   Again. IF EVERYONE was using Tor, PGP, etc, NO MATTER HOW FLAWED OR
   COMPROMISED, it WOULD break them, and their respective country's
   treasury.
   Promoting the idea we SHOULDN'T use it and 'spread the risk' is a
   useful idiot's cowardly POV.
   Rr

References

   1. https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveillance-data-deluge/