I tend to like Glenn Greenwald's work, but it is often presented a little too breathlessly for my taste. The opener here is especially one-sided:

> The British spy agency GCHQ is so aggressive, extreme and unconstrained by law or ethics that the NSA — not exactly world renowned for its restraint — often farms out spying activities too scandalous or illegal for the NSA to their eager British counterparts.

This is true. But it is neither a unique nor one-sided arrangement. The UK asks the US to do their dirty work for them; we ask them to do ours. It's an agreement of mutual benefit that allows quasi-oversighted organisations to side-step the restrictions of the constitutions of their own respective governments.

It's not like the US is somehow less awful than the UK in this regard. And this grand partnership has been going on for a loooooong time.