Item — HN Reader

I think one of the most well known and egregious example of large scale surveillance outfit is the Stasi. It's reported that there was one informer per every 6 and a half people. Possibly the highest ratio of all known examples.

Stasiland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasiland is a fascinating read. And of course "The Lives of Others" is a must watch. If for no other reason than to experience an eloquent demonstration of powerful yet understated acting.

2 comments

Oh, it's not limited to the GDR. Switzerland in the eighties had the "Fichenaffäre" when it came out that the Swiss federal police did surveillance, and kept records on, about 10% of the population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal

The Stasi is a fascinating example because the fall of the GDR was quick enough that they couldn't destroy most of the existing files and evidence and we have a relatively clear picture of what happened there. For the Swiss files from the 80s, an official archive exists but access to actual data is relatively difficult. If other democratically elected governments practice Stasi-style surveillance, it would be extremely hard to find out (and would, arguably be the bottom of an iceberg ranging from regular law enforcement to espionage and counter-espionage, to proactive intelligence gathering to find likely terrorists, to proactive intelligence gathering on random citizens who are not terrorists but may have rented a car from a suspected terrorist's relative).

But it's quite a difference what happens with such 'fichen' info to a citizen/politician in Belarus and in Switzerland (or Germany or (probably) US).

There's definitely a large spectrum, between countries where the government uses violent means to suppress political oppostion (including but not limited to Belarus), over governments that deport people who met with a "person of interest" to third-party countries where they get tortured (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar) to countries where people just feel that preemptive intelligence gathering without concrete indications is more a cover-your-ass thing than a useful technique to fight crime.

Note that Lawful Interception (i.e. interfaces for government agencies to siphon off data from internet providers), as it was established by US and Europe, was never a focused effort to provide data for criminal investigations but started out with different groups of users in mind (i.e., espionnage and possibly other uses that the average citizen would find spooky).

And, as the article explains, the same technology that is used to guarantee Lawful Interception in Germany/US/other countries is used for political suppression in countries that would perhaps lack the technical sophistication but have a budget and corresponding sources for these. (Although I'm reasonably certain that companies in China and Russia will be happy to provide similar technology to potential buyers).

You do realize this is peanuts compared to the amount of information the US collect on its own people today?

The technology and storage capacity of organisations like the Stasi in the 1980s is utterly trivial compared to what's possible now. Technology also greatly reduces the costs of spying, such that mass surveillance and "automatic policing" becomes economically viable without needing to employ an army of informants, investigators and people steaming open snail mail correspondence.