Personally, I get really frustrated when I spend 20 minutes writing out what I think is a respectful, thoughtful response with links to all of my sources, only to watch it get downvoted into oblivion only because (as far as I can tell) I'm conveying a minority opinion. It kills discussion and turns threads into echo chambers.
I turn on showdead and run my mouse over every grayed-out comment now. I think we'd have better discussions on divisive topics if people would save the downvote button for actual abuse instead of just indicating that they don't agree with you.
I just want to restate what jen_h said: Everyone should turn on showdead and read that comment. In addition to the comment being comprehensive, they also claim to have worked for the NSA. If that's true, then they have a unique and important perspective on this issue.
When someone lets us know about them, we unkill good comments that should obviously not be dead. Since there are too many posts for anyone to see them all, we rely on all of you to help us. The reliable way to do that is by emailing a link to [email protected]. General complaints are less likely to reach us, for the same reason that the original problem probably didn't.
We have a plan that I'm optimistic will greatly improve this situation. It involves turning most of this moderation, including what's [dead] vs. not, over to the community. But we don't know yet when we'll be able to implement it.
You can email the mods about stuff like bans you consider unfair at [email protected], in my experience they are very responsive.
You seem to have stumbled on to the fact that sometimes anonymity is the only way to allow honest discussion. The trade off is that it also allows jerks to be jerks.
I, personally, would prefer allowing a few more jerks in order to also allow people to be honest without being lynched. The reason I bring this up is that usually you find the pro-NSA commenters making arguments against a right to anonymity/privacy. What they generally mean is that others should not have a right to anonymity/privacy, because they are potentially bad people...but when "I" need it, it is justified.
Not saying this to you, personally, it is human nature to be hypocritical in such a way. Sometimes we just need to have it pointed out to us.