For that, you would need oversight, which intel shops typically don't provide. For instance, there's a history of scandals being revealed long after they were done in western democracies.

There's also the matter of being able to effectively implement a political program reducing the powers of intel agencies. To my knowledge this has never happened outside of political upheavals. Even then, if you look at the Church committee report and the Snowden affair, advances seem to be quickly erased.

You can say that the process can be improved but it's not like there is a shadowy organization that does w/e it wants without any oversight.

Snowden is another good example of how poor the oversight is - whether because they didn't think any of what has been revealed was wrong, or because they didn't know. I'm not sure which is worse.

And how would you know when documents are classified and everything can be overrun by secret courts and intelligence puppeteers?