Fyron, I wont try to convince you, I know that once you make up your mind there's no hope of that.
The problems with the intel system are well known and documented and have been since the begining of SE4. This is really nothing new. Personally I have no problem using it or not for this game.
We are the Borg. Intel is irrelevant. You will adapt to service us.
For those races that would tend to use it, disallowing it would, I think, take a lot of the richness of the RP out of it. Dominion, Romulan, and to a lesser extent the Ferengi and Federation all have active spy networks in Trek.
For a more competative game your point about disallowing intel taking away a piece of the strategy of the game is valid. People complain already that empire setup is too formulaic. Taking Intel out of the game makes it even more so. That argument doesn't really apply that much to a role play game like this though.
Geoschmo