[jancsika]

> 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.

[phpisthebest]

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