I've been noticing sporadic albeit frequent slowdowns across the Internet (for about the same length of time that such have been showing up with FTM).
Google-associated sites, including especially Gmail and the search engine, seem to be on permanent slowdown.
There's also been a considerable increase in phishing attempts and other fraud-related activity.
So maybe FTM's issues, sporadic as they are, are a side-effect.
Maybe slowdowns are a by-product of Internet traffic's being shunted through the NSA's servers — or indeed those of all Five Eyes and others — on its way to its legitimate destination.
