[nathanlied]

Or us Portuguese - up until 1974 we had PIDE (translated: International and State Defense Police); so within living memory of many in power today. They did all the things any "good" oppressive police force of a semi-fascist to fully-fascist state does: receive anonymous complaints from conspirators, arrest people and torture them for reasons ranging from the political ("being a communist") to the moral ("being homosexual"), and generally make sure everyone's lives are too miserable and filled with fear to dream of overthrowing the powers-that-be.

Our concern with privacy is so prevalent that fairly recently the collection (and subsequent usage) of metadata by police was deemed unconstitutional[1]. This was met with a lot of complaints by investigators, and while there's some sectors pushing for a constitutional revision, this seems unlikely at the moment, but not entirely off the table.

[1] - https://verfassungsblog.de/how-the-data-retention-legislatio...