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by ibarrac
3822 days ago
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This happens today in Cuba, where many of the same techniques of repression were copied from East Germany. As a young Pioneer I was told to inform on my parents if I heard any talk disparaging the government or Communism at home. There are neighborhood organizations called CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) that know what everyone is doing and will report any hint of dissent or any suspicious meetings. Snitching is encouraged as the patriotic duty of every citizen. |
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This is true of most countries, differing only by degree. A state has two choices for internal security: a small professional force that reacts quickly to flagged problems or a full scale surveillance state (as the Russians had in Moscow, where it was extremely hard for agents to operate due to the sheer number of KGB staff). The latter solution is usually not applied, or applied only partially, due to being prohibitively expensive even in a modern state.
For example, the FBI only has 35,000 employees. Even if each was dedicated to surveillance, that would be one employee per 9,000 American residents. Instead, they rely on the population approaching existing civil services (police departments, fire brigades, city halls) with suspicious activity; those that look genuine are further investigated and acted on.
The French government has recently published posters and a website [1] encouraging members of the Muslim community to highlight any recent radicalisation candidates. This obviously follows recent events but might also be linked to the systematic defunding and shifting around of internal security organisations (RG, DST, DGSI...) in the last decade or two resulting in the loss of the HUMINT network within the population. That FBI ratio, calculated for the DGSI? 1 employee for 20,000 residents.
[1] http://static1.stop-djihadisme.gouv.fr/var/stop/storage/imag...