Comment by Spooky23

The use case for the CA system is to prevent conventional criminal activity -- not state-level spying or lawful intercept. The $200 is just a paper trail that links the website to either a purchase transaction or some sort of communication detail.

The self-signed cert risk has nothing to do with the NSA... if it's your cert or a known cert, you add it to the trust store, otherwise, you don't.