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My thoughts and ideas for solutions (after an entire 30 minutes of thought):
1. Maybe these intel guys aren't as creepy or as bad of freedom-hating bureaucrats as I thought. I always believed the vast majority were doing their job as best they could. But now maybe I believe that a little more, even for the leadership that make some questionable, sometimes infuriating decisions from the outside (though the possibility of corruption via various forces is always there).
2. The national security risks of forcing the Intelligence Agencies to take their foot off the gas are probably not as bad as they'd like us to believe, or even believe themselves. TSA security theater comes to mind. Though, not to say the risks are trivial.
3.
📄.pdf - there is significant hope. Freedom Of Information requests are effective. There are ways to shine light into the secrecy. But the incentives are currently such that significant effort is required to do so. We should *reverse* that incentive structure; somehow reward the intelligence agencies for open sourcing as much information as they possibly can. Reward them at the individual level, and the organizational level. Then they, the ones with all the context, can balance strategic advantage with accountability. Currently they're only optimizing for strategic advantage. The FOIA is good on its own, but frames things in such a way as to make revelation the exception, not the default.
