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I do agree with regular.joe that there *IS* a legitimate need for state secrets.
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Me too. And I agree there are limits, both in the direction of secrecy and in transparency.
FWIW, Thomas Drake made an hour-long public presentation
to the Press Club which is available on YouTube (3Wp2BGLMqDM).
There's a lot fluff in the first 25 min, but then he gets to the meat
of his own case and what he was observing in/after 2002
- illegal "warrant-less wire taps" on large numbers of people.
- "legal - but secret" collection of data on large numbers of people
- unnecessary "over-classification" and secrecy "at the highest level"
- wasteful expenditures of huge sums of $, for little or no gain
I think that his presentation and the Q&A following raised exactly
the issues we are seeing, now in detail, with Snowden.
Drake's case put an end to the illegal warrant-less wire taps,
and he was exonerated on the "legal- but secret" programs
that wasted billions of $.
Eventually, the government case against him was dropped.
My point is/has been, that a good-faith, informed, Agreement is necessary in on the part of both parties.