1) the original post was not made on /r/conspiracy, it was crossposted there after the original was inexplicably deleted and the user banned
2) the federal government does use threats to coerce people to snitch on their peers
3) the federal government has in the past and is currently prosecuting journalists in leak investigations, with jailtime being a possible outcome. If you widen the scope you can see that they actively suppress journalists overseas who raise inconvenient facts about US policy.
The whole discussion (incl. drama) seems fairly interesting. I wonder if anyone would be up to editing it into some sort of coherent article, as of now following all the links and deleted/edited content makes bit difficult reading experience.