If provoking interesting conversation is a metric of a great essay, this essay certainly makes the grade. If one views intelligence organizations as a specialized news organization focused on foreign countries (excluding sabotage operations, which is arguably more military than intelligence), one can ask if the benefit of revealing secrets of potential bad actors (e.g., a plan to kill innocent people) outweighs the risk of someone taking the "countable steps to a police state." It is a simple question with complex answers. If we agree that learning of nefarious plans is a good thing, then we must acknowledge that, like news reporters, it is also important to keep secret how we learned them. Like democracy, both the risks and benefits are enormous. We can put in checks and balances, but, in the end, we count on good actors within the government to do the right thing.
If provoking interesting conversation is a metric of a great essay, this essay certainly makes the grade. If one views intelligence organizations as a specialized news organization focused on foreign countries (excluding sabotage operations, which is arguably more military than intelligence), one can ask if the benefit of revealing secrets of potential bad actors (e.g., a plan to kill innocent people) outweighs the risk of someone taking the "countable steps to a police state." It is a simple question with complex answers. If we agree that learning of nefarious plans is a good thing, then we must acknowledge that, like news reporters, it is also important to keep secret how we learned them. Like democracy, both the risks and benefits are enormous. We can put in checks and balances, but, in the end, we count on good actors within the government to do the right thing.