For the record, I am saddened to see that HN has given up on giving stories about this their proper place. There haven't been many stories on the topic rising to the top recently, and the few who did sank back down quickly, presumably under the weight of flaggings by people who'd rather read about Erlang or web design or funding topics or startup stories or obscure technological marvels or some other worthy topic (not sarcastic - I think those are fine topics to read about).
It is sad to see that in the end, distraction wins. Huxley was right - the world is going to turn bad before our eyes but we (as a civilisation) won't care, it's more fun to just read about what we like. We're just too good at producing stuff that we like to read, and at ignoring stuff that's uncomfortable.
Until this is resolved in some way, there should not be a day that passes without one of the top HN stories being about NSA spying.