Or hn needs to get over its sudden decision to become a mashup of /r/politics and /r/conspiracy.

Really, this is first rate nutty stuff. Did you know the U.S. government has a database containing records on hundreds of millions of its citizens (and even some non-citizens!)? It contains records of where you live, which causes you support and how much money you make. Some people in this database are flagged for "special attention" by government agents who conduct an even more thorough trawl through personal lives.

Of course, that's the IRS. Maybe some of us would prefer a taxation scheme that didn't require all this infrastructure, but there's nothing deeply nefarious about it.

It's one thing to be unhappy or disturbed by the alleged degree of NSA data collection on U.S. citizens, but when you start speculating about FEMA prison camps you've gone over the edge.

I think alan_cx greatly exaggerates the extent to which anyone claiming that the NSA might be intercepting communications (which is, of couse, their job) was described as a "conspiracy theorist" prior to revelations about how the program actually worked. What exactly did people think the NSA did?

By alan_cx's logic, we can't call people who think there are frozen aliens at Area 51 "conspiracy theorists" either.

Not everyone has to "go" somewhere. Prison release programs have people wear ankle bracelets. For some, house arrest will suffice with a GPS shackle. It will likely depend on your Threat Score. For instance, do you have a cache of weapons or is your "threat" mainly about ideas? People who can actively engage in force will likely have a higher score than someone whose "threat" is persuasion. (Although to a regime like China, the Dalai Lama is perhaps a higher threat than someone with a cache of guns. So your "threat mileage" might vary.)

Oh no, the people with ideas are the more dangerous. People with guns might kill a few people, but people with ideas can influence a lot more people.

Yes, Obama is rounding up our guns to put them into FEMA camps so that the Illumanati can give them polio vaccines to cause our firearms to have the autism.

This is the most reasonable comment I've read on HN in the last couple weeks. But you forgot to mention how the NSA's weather machines caused Hurricane Sandy and the housing crisis circa 2007.

Sorry I forgot to mention such an obvious fact--the chemtrails have given me the Alzheimer's prematurely.