[asdff]

> An army of humans is obedient up to a point, but there is a limit to what orders you can give them.

Whatever that limit might be is genuinely terrifying, given how far obedient soldiers have gone and not hit such a limit many times over the past.

[pydry]

It's more that in the past widespread surveillance required a lot of people, many of whom will have a conscience which will end up disrupting your surveillance.

The movie Das Lieben der Anderen makes this point very cogently.

Nowadays you can run a huge surveillance program with far fewer people, all of whom can be conscience free.

Im not sure how the next stasi will crumble but it'll be a lot harder to wrest them from power with the tools they have at their fingertips.