Comment by nephihaha
21 days ago
The GDR seems to be forgotten/misunderstood by many people. Which is a pity because it serves a warning about mass public surveillance plans that keep rearing their ugly head, even in Germany.
21 days ago
The GDR seems to be forgotten/misunderstood by many people. Which is a pity because it serves a warning about mass public surveillance plans that keep rearing their ugly head, even in Germany.
It was also not very unique? The social intimidation like arresting family members, public shaming and widespread people spying on people are just the cookie cutter template? China, NK are still cooking this recipe.
The GDR had possibly the highest ratio of secret police (Stasi) employees per # population in world history, it was really ridiculous how paranoid that government was. About 0.5% of the population were Stasi employees and an additional 1% were "inofficial employees", informers.
Its also the measly rewards that they did it for. In a dysfunctional economy, some people sold out there family and friends, cutting them of forever, for as little as a cheeseburger now and then.
People go on about surveillance but it's not really the problem compared to murderous dictatorships.
Murderous dictatorships are enabled by mass surveillance and personal data collection. Especially East Germany, which was obsessed with data harvesting on every individual and installed as many CCTV cameras as its budget and tech would allow. East Germany would be creaming itself over the panopticon we are walking into.
Yeah but there's lots of surveillance like stuff that goes on without turning into murderous dictatorships. In England where I live we have cctv all over the place and on the internet Google knows most of my stuff but neither really worry me - we haven't really had a dictatorship setup since 1215 or so.
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