The EU has been unaware of what GCHQ was doing until recently (Snowden). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10144217/EU-demands-answers-on-GCHQ-snooping.html And then they ruled it was likely illegal now that they've been investigating: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/nsa-gchq-illegal-european-parliamentary-inquiry After Brexit? GCHQ doesn't care what the EU thinks anymore, and any legal action EU could have taken and seemingly wanted to take against GCHQ is gone. It's not about the intelligence agencies caring or not caring about breaking the law, it's the fact that they have now been publicly accused of breaking it only a couple of years ago by the EU. The EU works at the speed of tortoise, so nothing has been done about it yet but it was likely it would have. And of course, in the style of their actions against Microsoft and Google monopolies, they probably would have screwed it up by missing the point, but it would have still made GCHQ's job more complicated for sure and GCHQ definitely is partying this weekend whether it was their idea to start Brexit or not.
Sarcasm doesn't travel over the internet. My original post was to more jokingly say they were behind it while simultaneously pointing out the real fact that they are clearly going to benefit from it. They probably already had a plan to deal with EU privacy laws, much like NSA has dealt with US privacy laws by using legal arguments to make "national security" exceptions to constitutional amendments like there are free speech exceptions for shouting "fire" in a movie theater. All they really have to do is hire some lawyers to argue in their direction (which I'm sure they necessarily have anyway), since the warhammer wasn't going to come down for many years anyway they could just have 2 lawyers in office dicking around half of the time and still come up with a logical legal defense. -Robert Anton WilsonLieutenant Eacher, before entering the service, had been an expert at Contract Law, the rules by which the primates determined and marked their territories. Remember: other mammals do this by leaving excretions which geometrically define the size and shape of the claimed turf, but domesticated primates do it by excreting ink on paper. Eacher was a lawyer, an expert at proving either that the ink excretions meant what they said (if he were being paid to prove that) or that the ink execretions didn't mean what they said (if he were being paid to prove that).