Your submission was flagged because it's a textbook case of what the guidelines tell you not to submit. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://

Your submission was flagged because it's a textbook case of what the guidelines tell you not to submit. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." You even admit in this discussion that the phenomenon isn't new ('all of the concern of late about abuses by the intelligence community and the "War on Leakers"') and that it would be covered on TV news ('this piece has been picked up and heavily covered by major news outlets everywhere'). If you want to discuss this story, that's great, but HN isn't the place for it.