Conspiracy theory :-)

For your amusement only.  Anyone who takes me seriously has other problems.

I hear about the US's NSA and all its listening posts around the world, how the US
telecommunications companies bend over backwards to pass it copies of all the packets they
shift around the world, and the only logical conclusion is that they are listening to
everything, or at least a great amount of it.  What for? you may ask, and the answer is to
find interesting tidbits.  Now there is no way they could do that without tremendously
automated filters.  There is so much cruft and banality on the internet, and a good portion of
that must be spam and botnets.

Which also means that the NSA must be aware of botnets, their members, and their controllers.
Imagine how those patterns must jump out at them, how certain commands appear on IRC and
suddenly thousands of computers replicate their spam, or DDoS attacks, or whatever other
activity ...

Which makes one wonder ... no doubt the NSA knows intimately what commands they could use to
make these botnets commit suicide.  Why would they not do that?  They don't seem the type to
fret over ethics of killing off botnets ... which leaves one reason: to not tip their hand, to
leave the botnets in place for when they decide there is a national emergency and they need to
coopt the botnets for their own attacks ...

That is my theory, and I'm sticking with it.  I hope you enjoy it.