I think while this is a popular way to think about these things, it doesn't offer enough explanatory power for when things seemingly "go wrong":
Rights afforded by a state are restrictions on a state's power over its subjects. But as the state holds ultimate authority, the only way these rights are upheld in practice is through a system of self-imposed indirection and bureaucracy that mostly exists to limit the power of any one individual operating the state, rather than the state as a whole.
The First Amendment means whatever the state wants it to mean. The Supreme Court can make a case-specific ruling one way or another but it intentionally holds no direct power. A police officer can literally get away with killing you if they can construct a scenario that gives them sufficient justification to do so. The problem with intelligence agency is that by necessity they have less red tape holding them down and they're thus in practice far less limited in how much power they can wield.
States are authoritarian and oppressive by default. They're only held back by self-imposed limitations. But those limitations only exist at the behest of the states themselves. Try and openly plan to dismantle a state (using violence or not) and most states will abandon any pretense of freedom of speech in a second.
Rights afforded by a state are restrictions on a state's power over its subjects. But as the state holds ultimate authority, the only way these rights are upheld in practice is through a system of self-imposed indirection and bureaucracy that mostly exists to limit the power of any one individual operating the state, rather than the state as a whole.
The First Amendment means whatever the state wants it to mean. The Supreme Court can make a case-specific ruling one way or another but it intentionally holds no direct power. A police officer can literally get away with killing you if they can construct a scenario that gives them sufficient justification to do so. The problem with intelligence agency is that by necessity they have less red tape holding them down and they're thus in practice far less limited in how much power they can wield.
States are authoritarian and oppressive by default. They're only held back by self-imposed limitations. But those limitations only exist at the behest of the states themselves. Try and openly plan to dismantle a state (using violence or not) and most states will abandon any pretense of freedom of speech in a second.