User blog comment:Semanticdrifter/Digital Protest Against the FISA Improvements Act/@comment-8140937-20140207164629/@comment-24459455-20140208154428

@Brandon Rhea: "are just conspiracy theories, not real things"

This is a misleading sentiment. Conspiracy theories are real things and strawman associations of fallacious ideas to actual conspiracies (the five eyes agreement of the NSA, GCHQ, and various western powers is a conspiracy: to conspire, to work together) is not a credible means of discounting ideas.

The concept of a mass surveillance net was in the conspiracy theory domain for many years, and many users, such as yourself, deemed it unreal or simply the ideas of fantasty, with many putting forward the argument that 'if it was happening someone would have told us about it'. The mass surveillance network dates back to "Operation Shamrock" in WWII and has been continuing since (with the Patriot Act further enabling it in 2001, which is more than 12+ years ago) of which no-one spoke about.

It's only Edward Snowden who managed to make a dent and he wasn't even the top dog in the heirarchry. But to claim it's "just conspiracy theories" as "not real things" is wrong, especially now numerous such theories have turned out to be true.

Combustion and flame-resistant passports, anyone?