The monitoring of online communications is one thing, but the reaction to SIM hacking will spark a more visceral reaction.
A year and a half after the Edward Snowden revelations, we go about our days with the weary resignation that everything we do online can probably be tracked by the intelligence services.
Now we have to think about the calls we make and the texts we send on our mobile phones.
Another revelation - this one from The Intercept - and another new level of intrusion.
GCHQ and the NSA hacked into Gemalto, the largest SIM card maker in the world and stole encryption keys. 3G and 4G calls are quite well protected by encryption. But anyone with a key can listen in - and that now includes the security services.
Given all that's been alleged by Snowden (some of which has been officially confirmed by the NSA and GCHQ, some of which has not), how serious is this latest threat?
In terms of mass surveillance, this is unlikely to be on as big a scale. Listening in on hours of phone calls is a lot more work than scanning emails and other online communications by keyword.
But there are two important things. First, this shows the security services breaking into a foreign company's systems to steal personal information that was designed to remained secure.
That feels much more aggressive than dipping into internet traffic as it flows by.
Second, even if fewer people are affected by this type of surveillance, it's a lot more personal.
We've always tended to assume that internet communications are monitored - probably because this is the deal we make with companies like Google and Facebook.
But we expect our private phone calls to be just that: private. No one thinks that mobile networks monitor calls in the same way broadband providers monitor internet traffic.
What we have is a familiarly disturbing scenario: spies literally listening in, eavesdropping, on personal conversation.
The response to Snowden's documents has been fairly muted in the UK.
This could provoke a more visceral reaction.
A year and a half after the Edward Snowden revelations, we go about our days with the weary resignation that everything we do online can probably be tracked by the intelligence services.
Now we have to think about the calls we make and the texts we send on our mobile phones.
Another revelation - this one from The Intercept - and another new level of intrusion.
GCHQ and the NSA hacked into Gemalto, the largest SIM card maker in the world and stole encryption keys. 3G and 4G calls are quite well protected by encryption. But anyone with a key can listen in - and that now includes the security services.
Given all that's been alleged by Snowden (some of which has been officially confirmed by the NSA and GCHQ, some of which has not), how serious is this latest threat?
In terms of mass surveillance, this is unlikely to be on as big a scale. Listening in on hours of phone calls is a lot more work than scanning emails and other online communications by keyword.
But there are two important things. First, this shows the security services breaking into a foreign company's systems to steal personal information that was designed to remained secure.
That feels much more aggressive than dipping into internet traffic as it flows by.
Second, even if fewer people are affected by this type of surveillance, it's a lot more personal.
We've always tended to assume that internet communications are monitored - probably because this is the deal we make with companies like Google and Facebook.
But we expect our private phone calls to be just that: private. No one thinks that mobile networks monitor calls in the same way broadband providers monitor internet traffic.
What we have is a familiarly disturbing scenario: spies literally listening in, eavesdropping, on personal conversation.
The response to Snowden's documents has been fairly muted in the UK.
This could provoke a more visceral reaction.
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