[mcpie]

You need an NSA and CIA simply by virtue of the fact that every other country has one.

Secrecy is also an essential part of negotiations - you can't reach middle ground if all your concessions are made public. There's a balance to be struck, though we're clearly far from achieving that atm.

A little secrecy by itself is not an issue, as long as the process built around it is as transparent as possible. That's the issue you're facing with this whole PRISM thing, lack of accountability and transparency.