I don't think that this was a passing reference - a passing reference would have been him saying "I wonder if the NSA can read my text messages on this phone" when texting is an expected feature on any modern phone.

Fingerprint scanners are not yet prevalent in modern smartphones, and fingerprints are one of the primary ways that law enforcement can trace / track individuals. If the NSA, which has already been shown to have backdoors into Apple's systems, was able to access fingerprint data on a massive scale, this would be a massive affront to privacy for millions of users around the world.

pilif's comment was absolutely relevant to discussion of the iPhone 5S launch, as one of the phone's primary new features has the potential to be a massive security and privacy breach given information we've recently learned regarding Apple's close relationship with the NSA.

>But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn't help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul?

To quote him. Please explain how he "did no such thing"

He's talking about this submission, not this site. There are dozens and dozens of other submissions where NSA discussion is more on-topic, and anybody here is free to submit their own article on the topic for discussion. That way, people that want to discuss the NSA at that moment can do so, and people that want to talk about something else can do so, too.

To put it another way: the problem is not the topic. It's the tactic of derailing every other topic that people want to talk about just because you think something else is too important to be ignored. That tactic, as well-intended as it might be, has a history of driving good users away from once-good fora precisely because it's so annoying to not be able to talk about anything else.

How is it not on-topic to discuss NSA surveillance in a discussion about one of the world's most popular internet-connected devices collecting biometric data under the control of a large American corporation?

It is becoming crystal clear that people really do not understand how important this issue is, the degree to which it permeates this industry and how farked we are if we cannot begin to understand the foundational position we require in order to change it.

Thank you for your succinct statement, I have very little faith we will get through this any time soon given the reaction I see on HN, Reddit and other sites where the most seemingly qualified among us to do anything cannot even comprehend how pernicious this problem is.