HN readers can make up their own minds about what parts of an article are important. It's not the submitter's prerogative to do that for everybody. Being first to submit a story confers no authority over it. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do so in the comments, so your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's.
HN's value hierarchy starts with respect for the content and for the reader; submitters are somewhat down on the list. Sorry, but it does apply to all of us qua submitter.
I'm not disagreeing about the detail you singled out. Arguably, the article buries the lede. The place to point that out, however, is not in the title but in the comments, where there is ample opportunity to discuss the details and where the submitter is on the same footing as everyone else.
Edit: this discussion always comes up in the context of a title where people agree with the submitter's rewrite and disagree with moderators' reversion to the original. But that's not a good basis for assessing the rule. Instead, you should consider the far more common case of all the rewritten titles you disagree with, either because they're flat-out wrong or because the author's and your opinions differ. Imagine what HN would be like if it that were routinely ok. The front page would mostly be spin. HN would be more tendentious and have more kibitzing about titles than it does now. Those effects would be compounded everywhere else. It would be a very different place. The more experience I have with HN, the more I feel that pg's decision to have it always focus neutrally on content is one of the wisest design choices he made.
It was found that Assad was having traffic monitored through BlueCoat proxies installed at the ISP level. Logs were leaked showing monitoring of religious, sexual, political content.
Of course many are now dead, countless others imprisoned. Much thanks to BlueCoat and salesmen who assisted Assad's government in procuring the hardware.
Sidenote: This topic, and others around it have gotten several accounts of mine here ghosted. Best stick to discussing how your start-up wants to sell traffic monitoring hardware and SaaS via independent sales agents to whoever has cash.
Similarly, reddit will completely shut down any threads that start to become too activist on the grounds of "witch hunting." It's amazing how we've already systematically nerfed the internet as a tool for bringing about political change.
But reverting this title was arguably inappropriate because the NYT's original title is misleading in its understatement.
I'm not arguing that what you submitted as the title is not an accurate summary of the article; HN guidelines are that you're supposed to submit the original title of the article, and only submit a new title if the article's original title is appropriate.
Discrediting anyone looking to change the status quo.
"It should also trouble Americans that the N.S.A. could head down a similar path in this country. Indeed, there is some indication, from a top-secret 2012 document from Mr. Snowden’s leaked files that I saw last year, that it already is. The document, from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the director of the N.S.A., notes that the agency had been compiling records of visits to pornographic websites and proposes using that information to damage the reputations of people whom the agency considers “radicalizers” — not necessarily terrorists, but those attempting, through the use of incendiary speech, to radicalize others. (The Huffington Post has published a redacted version of the document.)"
[Edit] For reference, the original title was: "NSA spying on porn visits of ordinary Americans" - which is exactly what they seem to be doing.