I don't think you actually know that it 'pisses GCHQ off quite a lot'. Public news about this can be misleading on purpose. Perhaps the cunning plan is to frighten those with something to hide into using Tor for which (who knows?) they have developed tracking techniques via a variety of approaches. If true, they'd be crazy to make that public. Herd your mice along the Tor route by discouraging use of the non encrypted internet.

All irrelevant really since anyone can arrange to communicate via an innocuous looking one-time pad whatever the weather irrespective of any possible moves that a government can make short of shutting everything down!