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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

You can not have "Government by the people, for the people" when you allow some people to keep secrets from other people under the guise of "national security"

Self governance is incompatible with states secrets, and only leads to abuse, corruption, and tyranny.

History is full of known abuses, and for every known abuse there is the potential for LOTS of unknown abuse.

One can say "well congress will hold them accountable" but along time ago congress passed a law to declassify everything around JFK assassination, yet multiple presidents after bring pressured by the CIA for "national security reasons" have refused to release all kinds of document in direct violation of that law.

the CIA, any other agency with the power to "classify" things, is a direct and ever present threat to not only liberty but the underpinning of democracy everyone claims to support.

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Some level of secrecy for purely operational matters is natural. You don't want to give out the keys to your secure communications system or publish your military dispositions in real time.

On the other hand, the existence of programs like this cannot and should not be granted a veil of secrecy. It's a sad irony that the US presents itself as the champion of a rules-based international order, human rights etc., while refusing to submit itself to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court or sign any treaty that might be even slightly disadvantageous.

I can understand that limited position, however then we get into the proper role, size, and make up of government.

The foundation of the US was there was not to be a standing army, in fact they made it unconditional. Only allowing for a defensive navy.

Of course likely most things in the constitution it was quickly ignored and/or "interpreted" to mean something else allowing for massive expanding on both power and size of the federal government

This expansion causes pressure to keep more and more things secret for "operational matters" then before long everything is "operational matters" and need to be secret.

One of the primary reasons the CIA gives for not wanting most things declassified it because it would give away "current capabilities, or operational programs" thus this CIA is already abusing this classification (operational matters ) to keep lots of historical records classified.

>>while refusing to submit itself to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court or sign any treaty that might be even slightly disadvantageous.

Nor Should they and any government official that did that should be tried and convicted of Treason. The US Constitution is the final say for our government, not an international court. I reject globalism of that type.

Free Trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none, including entangling our legal systems

The idealized United States required compromises from day 1. Among the things the Continental Army did, instead of standing down, was suppress a tax revolt in western Pennsylvania.

(... and that's before we get into much messier issues with the government-as-constructed such as what led to the Civil War. The United States is arguably currently on version 4 of its federal government, depending on how you slice "major releases").

> the CIA, any other agency with the power to "classify" things, is a direct and ever present threat to not only liberty but the underpinning of democracy everyone claims to support.

The part I put in italics is too stringent. National security quite obviously necessitates classification. E.g., Turing's classified Enigma team was definitely less of a threat to democracy than, say, the WWII equivalent of an HN public bikeshedding marathon about how best to use the newly discovered codebreaking to win for the allies.

What matters is what happens when we discover abuses. E.g., AFAICT nobody from the CIA has been held accountable for what was documented (when not redacted) in the Torture Memos that came out of Feinstein's office. That kind of lack of accountability is a threat to democracy.

But it in no way implies that nothing should ever be redacted.

yes it does imply that, The reason they have never been held accountable is because of the redactions, because they punish "whistleblowers" more than people that abuse the system, the power under which they can do that punishment is the secrecy laws themselves

You fail to see they irrevocably connected, the root cause of the abuse it the secrecy, anything other than eliminating the authority, is simply putting a band aid over a bullet hole

That really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Was it wrong to keep D-Day invasion plans secret? The argument is that you couldn't even function as a military without some secrets.

"Self governance" at the scale being discussed here is a myth.

I wonder to what extent governance itself becomes a myth at mega-nation scales. The system may behave as if governed, but if it decides not to could anyone stop it?

I would agree, that is why we were setup to have power distributed not just in 3 branches, but 50 states, and the people themselves.

The more consolidated the power becomes the less we the people are able to govern ourselves.

The presidential elections should be the least important in any time we are not at war, but it seems now everyone looks to not only the Federal government, not one branch and one person in one branch of the federal government to fix all the nations problems.

"The President" has become a title of nobility, which is a sad place to find ourselves.

How would we be able to weaponize human rights abuses in other countries if the world knew we were deploying bioweapons? Censhorship, propaganda, and secrecy is the answer.

Not just secrets but deliberate misinformation in the name of national security

Another problem with state secrets is that the class of people with access to secrets is usually biased toward specific groups, races, or creeds, and said secrets are used to keep the group in a position of power.

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