The applicable "rules" (actually, they are labeled "guidelines" [0] for good reason) can be viewed as either supporting or opposing it.
Specifically, one could view it as on-topic as falling within "anything that good hackers would find interesting." (Section 215 surveillance clearly has a special interest within the "hacker" culture, which is more plugged into it than the general population), or as probably off-topic because "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
> I'm not positing an opinion, I'm arguing for a fact.
You are positing your interpretation of the application of rules which are fuzzy and inherently subjective as "fact", and where the only things in the rules that would support your conclusion are hedged with "most" or "probably". Your suggestion that the HN guidelines can reasonably be read in a way in which the topic here would be unequivocally, factually off-topic is an untenable argument.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html -- under "What to Submit".
You're conflating opinion and fact. Please stop. Majority vote does not dictate fact. HN is not a "anything and everything can be on the front page of the community votes it as such" site like Reddit is.
Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.
I'm actually replying to a discussion started about flagging.
GlickWick: I'm unclear as to how this thread is legitimate, personally. Doesn't seem to really fit with HN. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act either, but this belongs somewhere like Reddit.
You don't like the fact that I'm criticizing this thread, which is fine, but stop trying to cherry-pick silly reasons to discredit what I'm saying. It's having the opposite effect of what you intended anyways.
That is just your opinion. Rules are clear on this:
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
As you can see, no additional caveats are listed. Therefore you, by responding to a comment which was about incorrect flagging, complained about inappropriate submissions, directly violated the rules.
Your last paragraph is basically just ad-hominem.
I'm ending this "discussion" here and will not be reading your inevitable further comments.
Please don't be personally rude on HN.
You're right that the rules do not exclude all politics, only most. GlickWick is right that upvotes alone do not determine HN's front page and about the weakness of the voting mechanism in general.