Ok can we please stop with the "conspiracy theorist" label/ad hominem attacks? After the NSA revelations have shown things to be a lot worse than even the more paranoid conspiracy theorists thought, folks with an eye for corruption have earned a little wiggle room to be taken seriously.
If you begin a statement with "It's very clear" then I expect you to back that statement up with facts so that the rest of us can see why it's so clear. Does it seem reasonable that Goldman Sachs want to send a message to their own programmers? Is that going to work well for them in recruiting?
If anything, the NSA revelations have given conspiracy theorists carte blanche to go full steam on their theories. You'll hardly find a thread related to Google on HN without the obligatory "Well, now that we know that Google has given NSA has unfettered access to all data..."
Another important aspect is whether or not the belief in these theories is justified, regardless of whether or not they turn out to be true. This kind of relates to the Gettier problem in epistemology, where one may "know" something completely by accident, and we wouldn't really consider that "knowledge."
Were conspiracy theorists justified in believing their theories prior to the NSA leaks? Maybe, maybe not. But we should probably consider that independently of whether or not their theories turned out to be right. After all, we can never be 100% sure of our knowledge; the best we can do is seek the most reliable methods of inquiry. If a conspiracy theorist makes 50 predictions and 45 of them turn out to be correct, then we might have a reason to adopt their thought patterns; if someone has one big suspicion and that suspicion turns out to be true, I'm not sure how much we can conclude from that.
(Sorry, I know this discussion is getting off-topic... I just have a mild fascination with conspiracy theories and epistemology.)
Nothing the NSA was doing was news. Or indeed even hidden, much of it having been previously reported on HN and even the mainstream news.
Few people connected the NSA dots because few people connect any dots. There are dozens of other important stories snowed under by the same blizzard of laziness and stupidity.
After the NSA revelations have shown things to be a lot worse than even the more paranoid conspiracy theorists thought
Really? Even the more paranoid conspiracy theorists didn't think that the Government could read the address and subject of your emails? The same people that think the Government did 9/11 and faked the moon landing?
