> It's a frustrating situation because intelligence agencies obviously do need to keep secrets
Or do they? I mean, it's not that there can not be advantages to doing so, but then the same can be said about torture, about killing "dangerous" people without a trial, about censorship, ..., or in short: There can be advantages to any of the things that authoritarians like (as long as they themselves aren't the target, obviously).
But still, we have recognized that we are better off as a society if we make all those things illegal, because the good that comes from them is outweighed by far by the bad. Maybe we should come to that same conclusion about "state secrets"? Maybe we should realize that they are inherently incompatible with democracy, and that having them damages democracy so much that we would be better off accepting the risks of not having "state secrets"? Or, to at least reconsider how far they can go/how they can be used? Like, I dunno, maybe you can have state secrets, but not for longer than three years, and you can not convict someone based on secrets? I don't claim to know what the right balance would be, just throwing out random ideas, but my point is that it seems to me that the damage done by the concept of state secrets warrants reconsidering whether they are actually worth it.
Or do they? I mean, it's not that there can not be advantages to doing so, but then the same can be said about torture, about killing "dangerous" people without a trial, about censorship, ..., or in short: There can be advantages to any of the things that authoritarians like (as long as they themselves aren't the target, obviously).
But still, we have recognized that we are better off as a society if we make all those things illegal, because the good that comes from them is outweighed by far by the bad. Maybe we should come to that same conclusion about "state secrets"? Maybe we should realize that they are inherently incompatible with democracy, and that having them damages democracy so much that we would be better off accepting the risks of not having "state secrets"? Or, to at least reconsider how far they can go/how they can be used? Like, I dunno, maybe you can have state secrets, but not for longer than three years, and you can not convict someone based on secrets? I don't claim to know what the right balance would be, just throwing out random ideas, but my point is that it seems to me that the damage done by the concept of state secrets warrants reconsidering whether they are actually worth it.