Comment by whatshisface

In the Soviet Union, the NKVD had to employ prisoner laborers known as "Zeks" to design and engineer their surveillance equipment. They were motivated to betray others by the thread of a transfer to mines in Siberia that were effectively death camps. This story is told in Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, the prison for engineers being the metaphorical first circle of hell.

In the US we just use people who didn't think about it too deeply.