In the UK there is "social media intelligence", where AI systems scan the firehose of messages as they appear. [1]
So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.
The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de facto allowed by the police.
In comparison the wrong social media post can carry a lengthy jail sentence. [2]
The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".
If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
This can show up on enhanced job checks, affecting employment.
You put hateful in quotes but I do want to point out that this is the tweet from the thing you linked:
> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*** hotels full of the bastards for all I care …. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it
The context also needs to be noted. This was part of the social media storm that whipped up a wave of right-wing, racist hatred and violence in the wake of the Southport riots. No such waves of violence have sprung out of trans activism.
That certainly doesn't meet the threshold for a credible threat.
It's a despicable thing to say, and it seems like even she realized that when she calmed down and deleted it. But what's the basis for treating it as a crime?
There was a CCC talk on the practices of the Stasi some years ago (I forget exactly which year).
What stayed with me from the talk was that they had shown recovered Stasi photos of a young man's home where he had a wall dedicated to American iconography.
The speaker stated that in the current era this would just be trivially collected from social media instead of needing to gain physical access to property.
Edit: It was 32C3 What Does Big Brother See While He Is Watching at appx the 40m mark.
> Over the course of three years, I was able to research the archives left by East Germany's Stasi to look for visual memories of this notorious surveillance system and more recently I was invited to spend some weeks looking at the archive by the Czechoslovak StB. Illustrating with images I have found during my research, I would like to address the question why this material is still relevant – even 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
That isn't the part of the argument that needs a source - pretty much everyone who is anyone in the public sphere seems to have death threats made against them and threats of extreme violence are actually pretty common at protests. Guillotines at protests are a reasonably common fixture for example [0]. That is the reason the standard needs to be someone actually doing something before the police get involved - people say all sorts of threatening things in political contexts. It's pretty scary but it is better to tolerate it and let people get their emotions out into the open. They generally don't mean it.
[X] has has been subject to death threats at a protest is a pretty safe blind claim. Particularly for politicians, public figures, rich people, identifiable races and political groupings. Some yobbo will write something stupid on a placard and wave it around sooner or later.
So Britain is not a liberal democracy anymore? Are you sure you aren't falling for some propaganda here? This just seems very unlikely.
If this were actually true Britain would be violating basic premises of what is considered justice in a liberal democracy. Policing someone based on whether the targets of their threats are politically acceptable is obviously not are tactics used in autocratic regimes. Loyalists e.g. in Russia are free to threaten the opposition however they like at worst getting a slap on the wrist. At the same time much less serious threats against the regime are harshly punished.
If what you say were true and not just some propaganda operation, then the British political system has slid sharply towards authoritarianism. Obviously liberal democracy is more than equality before the law, but is one important pillar. This happening is incompatible with my view of the UK.
I must admit I'm struggling to see the problem. If someone is hostile or prejudiced against people of a certain race, sexual orientation or disability then they should be excluded from jobs working with those people.
This case sounds crazy, I cannot even imagine loosing a child and how anybody could expect someone to keep sane in those conditions.
Beyond this, there is a very clear difference between inciting hatred towards a group of people based on race, religion, nationality, origin, etc, and towards a single individual without those aggravations. The law is quite clear about this distinction in various countries (Public Order Act in the UK for instance), and the penalties are rightfully much stronger when one would try to instil hatred towards a racial (or other) group.
Sometimes there is a worthwhile discussion on the reach and breath of policing, sometimes ridiculous people with insane views and 0 technical or legislative knowledge make opinion eds for people to share as rage bait.
Please just look at the other content from the "lovely" Laurie Wastell of the spectator to find the kind of groups, opinions and places she wants to protect vs those she doesn't.
like I would be kinda embarrased to share news sources from people being actively sued for the harm they caused with their misinformation (in their case vaccine lies).
> If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
this was a law introudced by a conservative goverment, as part of their increase in police tools, which in large part came from support for "anti woke" policing of the pro black protests that came after it erupted in america.
People like the previouslike mentioned Mrs Wastell advocated for stronger sentencing and more police, and now that the leopards are eating the faces of the people who spend all day on facebook sending death threats to muslims she is now so incredibly offended.
Btw another reason for the focus on the NCHI is because the police are swamped, the Conservatives under theresa may cut their budget 40% which meant they have way less people so to keep stats up, you gotta focus on the easy shit.
Maybe if we hadn't brought in consulting types who advocate for stats to show work progress, conservative cuts to salaries and advocated for "blue lives matter" which pushed for stronger sentencing laws we would not be here but somehow Mrs Whitehall and you will take 0 accountability and instead blame "woke judges" or some other nonsense as she does in her article.
If you really believe that your fellow citizens can be easily influenced to undertake extreme actions by a twitter post, why not end democracy altogether? Since citizens are seemingly perpetual minors who lack agency over their actions. This is why all authoritarian regimes absolutely love hate speech laws.
> The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".
That’s what Elon Musk calls it. In fact, the difference in the case you mention is simply that:
(i) Inciting racial hatred is a specific offense which doesn’t require a credible death threat. There is no offense of inciting hatred against TERFs. Like that or don’t – but the police don’t make the laws.
(ii) The context of Connolly posting during the riots in which actual violent crimes against minority groups were being committed.
That's disturbing. Instead of the govt. going after people we should enable people going after people.
That's how it's done in real life and that's how we protect ourselves from arsholes in real life. That's why the police is only involved when some actual danger is present, you are not expected to just endure the constant harassment.
IMHO someone being a complete cunt and you not having a recourse is also not acceptable. It's terrorizing people, there must be a mechanism to stop these people and that mechanism should not be police intervention.
The things they do should somehow stick to their name for example or you should be able to go after them just as brutally. Honestly, I like 4Chans way with dealing with people much more than restricted, moderated police involved crap that the Web has become. Someone built a following, then they harass people but your only recourse is legal stuff and you can't do doxxing, can't use bad words etc because you get banned/demoted/shadowbanned/rate-limited. It's not working, it's destroying the society.
For example, the women jailed for just tweeting plead guilt that she was spreading materials with intention to stir racial hatred. In a real life such person will be quickly stopped one way or another, she will be confronted and then removed or ignored. If her material is actually good, it will be noted and supported and the issue resolved. Online is not like that people with agenda lie, spam and annoy people without facing a pushback or consequences. It's not a real discussion, it's not real problem solving.
Just wait until you see the difference in how the police treat someone between defending yourself and attacking someone in the UK. Note: Don’t try to defend yourself if you know what’s good for you.
On this topic, I can't recommend enough the movie "The life of Others" (2006). Depicts surveillance in Eastern Germany and the state of sheer fear and paranoia its citizens had to live in.
Stasiland by Anna Funder is also a great read on the topic. And then there’s Katja Hoyer’s “Beyond The Wall” which takes a comprehensive look at the DDR.
It is available from Amazon.de on blu-ray (probably also on Prime Video depending on the country), under the original German title: Das Leben der Anderen.
You can find it on bittorrent: https://bt4g.org. That's a DHT search engine. Put in your query and sort by seeder count, then use the magnet link to load it onto a bittorrent client (e.g. qbittorrent).
I have a tenant who has been living in my garden house for two years without paying rent. It is almost impossible to solve this situation. I am not even allowed to turn off the water or electricity. There are always two sides to every coin.
Comparing agents that will go into your home and move things around to drive you crazy and directly torturing you, with a debt registers is not a comparison I see as successful.
It is way more democracy and freedom than living in a state with an entity like the Stasi, a mixture between the NSA and the Gestapo, which is used to curb any opposition, at least.
It's not perfect, but this alternative is way worse.
And in the US, landlords can pull credit reports from private companies, and if the private company says you missed a credit card payment a year ago they'll reject you.
If the private credit score company returns a wrong score because someone else has the same name as you and they mixed up some records, well, it's a private company, you have no recourse.
Since it's not the government, but a for-profit private company, it can and will also sell your information.
If you opt out of this private company's system, landlords can and will reject you.
It is well known that the US is the most free country in the multiverse, so I would say no, having a government do it is not freedom (that's a social credit system like china has), but if instead it's a private company creating that credit score, that's freedom.
What law do you want to have to prevent this? Companies are people, and if your two previous land-lords are free to gossip about whether you paid rent (free speech), of course equifax should be able to sell that information (also free speech). People's right to privacy stops where free speech, and the ability of private entities to profit and raise GDP, starts.
The section at the end about support and solidarity is the most important bit.
Personally, I feel like Zersetzung has already been a thing in the US since at least 2014. Modern social media is very, very good at getting people to shout at each other and do nothing. People don't talk to each other, they shout to themselves while watching the telescreen.
Bin Laden wanted to create a unified Islamic Caliphate uniting Muslims around the world, and overthrowing governments in the Middle East and Arabic world seen as usurpers and puppets of the west and zionists.
I don't think he particularly cared whether or not people in England or America got locked up for social media posts or other alleged freedoms. I don't think he would have been thrilled about the state of the Middle East today, if he were alive to see it.
What's happening in western countries is significantly the doing of (and almost certainly in line with the goals of) our ruling classes. Breaking down social cohesion, reducing the population of a country to little more than its head count and what it can do "for the economy", and pitting different groups to fight against one another are all key to ruling in their own interests.
I had a similar thought a while ago. If the goal of the terrorists was to shake the system in such a way it destroyed (or seriously harmed) itself, that goal was achieved. I believe the authoritarian ICE deportations without due process are essentially the imperial boomerang of the Guantanamo Bay-style human right abuses that followed 9/11.
In human history stretching the homelands rules beyond recognition when acting abroad has rarely turned out well for the homeland in the long run.
How does one reconcile the idea that the Stasi disappeared political opponents regularly but also engaged in weird stuff like moving people's socks around.
> The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.
I get that sometimes a "broken" opponent is more useful than a dead one as they can sabotage the whole cause, like this article implies. But if you hold as much power as they did then it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
You can't disappear everyone. Deniable punishment of possible precrime would create superstitions for the general population to be on their best behavior. Sabotage that slows down an adversary would enable more time for surveillance.
> One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.” In just five years, Nocco’s signature program has ensnared almost 1,000 people.
Perhaps for the same reason Russia's intelligence forces does it? They kill people in an obvious manner to send a message and the message is to demoralise, destabilise and psychologically harass other people. "I could be next"
I'm not sure if the Stasi disappeared people in an obvious or hidden manner though. Maybe they did it more frequently than modern states assassinations? In both cases it shows that the life of any person is not important to them - what's important is the effects an action causes.
The question you ask is really important, because it shows how devious the Stasi regime was and why it lasted half a century. Why would they do this? Why would they go through these lengths to destroy a person so entirely they wouldn't even need to disappear them?
The Stasi knew that power is never that absolute.
The GDR was built upon the idea that is was good, not evil (like the West). You can't be good and regularly disappear public figures, especially those from intellectual cycles. Additionally, people were aware of the oppression as is. If the GDR would have simply disappeared people, there would have been revolts. Germans were too connected to the other reality.
The Stasi documented what they did in quite some detail and most of the documents were not destroyed during the fall of the wall. So, there is no need for speculation.
I'm by no means an expert on the matter but as far as I know, the Stasi did not disappear political opponents regularly, at least not after Stalin's time. I looked over the article and didn't find that claim but if I missed it and it's in there, then the article is wrong about it. The Stasi had a large array of measures at disposal. Some people were cleared for moving out of the country to West Germany. Others went to prison. Some people were exposed to radioactive materials. Others got a better job that moved them away from other dissidents.
Specific "Zersetzungsmaßnahmen" you and the article mention were very rare - we're talking about an estimated few hundred to thousands cases in total. When they occurred, however, they were extremely devastating because not even experienced critics of the system imagined them. We're not just talking about switching socks and replacing good milk with spoiled one in the fridge. There were also cases of medical doctors prescribing the wrong drugs, for example, worsening the symptoms of diseases.
As far as I know, who became the victim of these special measures may not have been a fully rational decision. It seemed to be based to a large extent on the preferences of the case officers in charge.
Broader measures against critics of the system were far more common, however, and way more pervasive than what most people suspected at the time. For example, the father of a former girlfriend of mine was a famous GDR rock musician. He later found out from the archives that the Stasi planned and supervised his whole life and managed to break up his former band without anyone suspecting it. One guy moved somewhere else for work, another went to prison, and he moved elsewhere, too. There were also way more informants than he ever suspected. Basically, the Stasi and their informants interfered with what other artists he met, were he and his band mates got work, and so on. They planned over years. It went far beyond the usual method of giving people a telephone and letting them hear a loud click when the tape was switched on (they did that, too!).
> it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
Nevertheless, this happened. The Stasi was a huge bureaucratic organization with ideology at its core, built after the example of the KGB. Stasi officers considered themselves fully in the right, defending their people against counter-revolutionary and decadent activities. Goals ranged from "helping" citizens get on the right track towards socialism in a friendly but firm manner, over collecting information about potential adverse political activities, to completely destroying enemies of the state and doing counter-espionage.
I'm pretty sure that the intelligence services nowadays condone the contemporary identity politics revolution because it distracts people (especially the youth) from the actual problems of society.
I am old enough to remember the time where revolution meant actively fighting the oppressors or those in power, not posting on twitter about who has what between their pants and to which bathroom they should go to.
You are probably thinking of the Gerasimov doctrine (or so we call it) where they would use any non-military means to simply but effectively destabilize the enemy society. I'm sure you can see it at work all around us.
It's remarkable how quickly Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe the moment Soviet support went.
Despite decades of intense propaganda, killings of people in uprisings and the methods of Stasi as described in the article.
Even with all that effort most people didn't believe in the regime.
So it's hard to say whether the Stasi's tactics worked. Only people in the regimes like Ceausescu and Honecker actually thought people liked it. And perhaps not even them.
As for your last point, Solzhenitzyn said something memorable about that -
'We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying.
In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.'
As someone from a post-Communist country, unfortunately it didn't, exactly. The former ruling class just switched colours and looted the country during the "privatisation" phase of democratisation. People were never properly educated on democracy and stuff, and most of the parties that sprung up were just pure garbage interested in looting.
30 years on, the political landscape is still a disaster. Media is a shit show in the hands of a few. A lot of the older people (40+) long for the "good old days". A lot of the young have ran away for better opportunities. Democratic participation is very low.
The fall of the Communist regimes and subsequent liberalisation and democratisation were managed incredibly poorly in most of those countries. Yes, standards of living are much better, but if you ask a lot of the people, things are worse (because they're incapable of introspection, have been fed propaganda on Facebook and shit media, etc).
Actual support from the people was not wanted or needed by these regimes. They were content with having support by their party lapdogs, the kinds of people with no skills or personality, that would inform on their peers and magically become the factory's overseer. Those people owed everything to the system and they were the key to it continuing.
Everyone else was just kept in line. They set up both positive and negative incentives. Be neutral and you can live an OK life. Be a good communist and you can climb socially. Meet your West German uncle too often, or don't show up to the Labor Day parade and get a threatening talk. Actually voice your opposition to the regime and you may well find yourself in a Stasi torture prison.
Socialist doctrine said that socialism would be so good that people would soon(TM) embrace it organically. Of course they didn't, because it never delivered on anything and some western media still made it behind the iron curtain. Seeing a western supermarket shelf while you had to bribe someone to get spare parts for your washing machine is stronger than any propaganda.
And also intimidation and threats. All of the the regimes collapsed swiftly once Gorbachev declared there will be no Soviet military response, like there was in 1956 and 1968. One wonders what would have happened if Poland in 1981 didn't feel like the Soviets will repeat that; there are some reasons to believe they would not.
The communism collapsed because it was no longer possible to keep the knowledge of the 80s American supermarket hidden from them. That's it. If the communist regime provided what CCP does now - there would be absolutely no collapse.
It's worth repeating a tactic from every state's intelligence playbook, but I note that this article gives an interesting angle to this.
Informants and spies are almost always those at the top of your group, they are the leaders, the ones with the money, the ones with the van, the people with the time to help out, to print your flyers, the people who can organise and transport. Spies are going to be the people above you that you trust. Spies will be your friends. In the UK, police informants even fathered children with members of their infiltrated groups! They are not going to be the new strange people who join and are look nervous but who make excellent and easy scape goats. States want the maximum value for their intelligence, the spies are going to be at the top of your group.
The article suggests one way around it, to have flat organisations: to not have leaders. It gives resilience if when a person is compromised the group can continue, or when there is no leader the amount of information or damage that leader can cause would be less. Another way potentially would be the cell format, used in some of the worst terrorist groups, only operate in cells of 5 or less and only one of those in each small group have contact with only 1 other cell.
Informants fathering children with their sources was also a thing in the DDR. Often the lines were blurred because informants were former activists that were turned by threats and blackmail. But I personally know a woman who had 2 children with a guy who turned out to be an informant that had been specifically set upon her and her group of friends. She found out only after 1989 when the files were opened.
I really think the incoherence of modern reform movements (Occupy, BLM, Defund Police, etc) is the result of modern political suppression groups having enough tools in their toolbox to eliminate leaders of these movements.
Without a strong voice, the movement devolves into contradictory platforms, which results in no action.
Readit News
So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.
The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de facto allowed by the police.
In comparison the wrong social media post can carry a lengthy jail sentence. [2]
The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".
If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
This can show up on enhanced job checks, affecting employment.
It's very similar to a Stasi file.
[1] https://policinginsight.com/feature/advertisement/social-med...
[2] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-punishment-of-lucy-c...
[3] https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c...
> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*** hotels full of the bastards for all I care …. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it
It's a despicable thing to say, and it seems like even she realized that when she calmed down and deleted it. But what's the basis for treating it as a crime?
The message you are quoting is now being propagated,which is unfortunate.
Most of the western world is moving to a risk based legal system and has a proportionaly measure build in.
If the message in question had a limited reach, then it should not lead to a conviction.
Just like we don't convict people who has inappropriate thoughts or write inappropriate things in their diary.
What stayed with me from the talk was that they had shown recovered Stasi photos of a young man's home where he had a wall dedicated to American iconography.
The speaker stated that in the current era this would just be trivially collected from social media instead of needing to gain physical access to property.
Edit: It was 32C3 What Does Big Brother See While He Is Watching at appx the 40m mark.
> Over the course of three years, I was able to research the archives left by East Germany's Stasi to look for visual memories of this notorious surveillance system and more recently I was invited to spend some weeks looking at the archive by the Czechoslovak StB. Illustrating with images I have found during my research, I would like to address the question why this material is still relevant – even 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
[X] has has been subject to death threats at a protest is a pretty safe blind claim. Particularly for politicians, public figures, rich people, identifiable races and political groupings. Some yobbo will write something stupid on a placard and wave it around sooner or later.
[0] I searched for "guillotines at political protests" as a sanity check and straight away saw a "decapitate TERFs" placard. https://news.sky.com/story/scottish-politicians-and-jk-rowli...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14638683/Police-inv...
If this were actually true Britain would be violating basic premises of what is considered justice in a liberal democracy. Policing someone based on whether the targets of their threats are politically acceptable is obviously not are tactics used in autocratic regimes. Loyalists e.g. in Russia are free to threaten the opposition however they like at worst getting a slap on the wrist. At the same time much less serious threats against the regime are harshly punished.
If what you say were true and not just some propaganda operation, then the British political system has slid sharply towards authoritarianism. Obviously liberal democracy is more than equality before the law, but is one important pillar. This happening is incompatible with my view of the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-crime_hate_incident
And according to these solicitors, such records are used in background checks:
https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c...
Beyond this, there is a very clear difference between inciting hatred towards a group of people based on race, religion, nationality, origin, etc, and towards a single individual without those aggravations. The law is quite clear about this distinction in various countries (Public Order Act in the UK for instance), and the penalties are rightfully much stronger when one would try to instil hatred towards a racial (or other) group.
Please just look at the other content from the "lovely" Laurie Wastell of the spectator to find the kind of groups, opinions and places she wants to protect vs those she doesn't.
like I would be kinda embarrased to share news sources from people being actively sued for the harm they caused with their misinformation (in their case vaccine lies).
> If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
this was a law introudced by a conservative goverment, as part of their increase in police tools, which in large part came from support for "anti woke" policing of the pro black protests that came after it erupted in america.
People like the previouslike mentioned Mrs Wastell advocated for stronger sentencing and more police, and now that the leopards are eating the faces of the people who spend all day on facebook sending death threats to muslims she is now so incredibly offended.
Btw another reason for the focus on the NCHI is because the police are swamped, the Conservatives under theresa may cut their budget 40% which meant they have way less people so to keep stats up, you gotta focus on the easy shit.
Maybe if we hadn't brought in consulting types who advocate for stats to show work progress, conservative cuts to salaries and advocated for "blue lives matter" which pushed for stronger sentencing laws we would not be here but somehow Mrs Whitehall and you will take 0 accountability and instead blame "woke judges" or some other nonsense as she does in her article.
That’s what Elon Musk calls it. In fact, the difference in the case you mention is simply that:
(i) Inciting racial hatred is a specific offense which doesn’t require a credible death threat. There is no offense of inciting hatred against TERFs. Like that or don’t – but the police don’t make the laws.
(ii) The context of Connolly posting during the riots in which actual violent crimes against minority groups were being committed.
That's how it's done in real life and that's how we protect ourselves from arsholes in real life. That's why the police is only involved when some actual danger is present, you are not expected to just endure the constant harassment.
IMHO someone being a complete cunt and you not having a recourse is also not acceptable. It's terrorizing people, there must be a mechanism to stop these people and that mechanism should not be police intervention.
The things they do should somehow stick to their name for example or you should be able to go after them just as brutally. Honestly, I like 4Chans way with dealing with people much more than restricted, moderated police involved crap that the Web has become. Someone built a following, then they harass people but your only recourse is legal stuff and you can't do doxxing, can't use bad words etc because you get banned/demoted/shadowbanned/rate-limited. It's not working, it's destroying the society.
For example, the women jailed for just tweeting plead guilt that she was spreading materials with intention to stir racial hatred. In a real life such person will be quickly stopped one way or another, she will be confronted and then removed or ignored. If her material is actually good, it will be noted and supported and the issue resolved. Online is not like that people with agenda lie, spam and annoy people without facing a pushback or consequences. It's not a real discussion, it's not real problem solving.
I've been looking for it for a while, with no success. I'd be happy with anything from DVD to archive.org/youtube upload or whatever.
Seems to be available in Germany and some other countries, but not here in Sweden at the moment (I think it used to be on Netflix here).
Deleted Comment
That's just a tiny example.
Is this control and surveillance or ... democracy and freedom ?
It's not perfect, but this alternative is way worse.
If the private credit score company returns a wrong score because someone else has the same name as you and they mixed up some records, well, it's a private company, you have no recourse.
Since it's not the government, but a for-profit private company, it can and will also sell your information.
If you opt out of this private company's system, landlords can and will reject you.
It is well known that the US is the most free country in the multiverse, so I would say no, having a government do it is not freedom (that's a social credit system like china has), but if instead it's a private company creating that credit score, that's freedom.
What law do you want to have to prevent this? Companies are people, and if your two previous land-lords are free to gossip about whether you paid rent (free speech), of course equifax should be able to sell that information (also free speech). People's right to privacy stops where free speech, and the ability of private entities to profit and raise GDP, starts.
Just a tiny example.
Personally, I feel like Zersetzung has already been a thing in the US since at least 2014. Modern social media is very, very good at getting people to shout at each other and do nothing. People don't talk to each other, they shout to themselves while watching the telescreen.
Unfortunately, it seems as if the terrorists might have achieved many of their goals years later.
I don't think he particularly cared whether or not people in England or America got locked up for social media posts or other alleged freedoms. I don't think he would have been thrilled about the state of the Middle East today, if he were alive to see it.
What's happening in western countries is significantly the doing of (and almost certainly in line with the goals of) our ruling classes. Breaking down social cohesion, reducing the population of a country to little more than its head count and what it can do "for the economy", and pitting different groups to fight against one another are all key to ruling in their own interests.
In human history stretching the homelands rules beyond recognition when acting abroad has rarely turned out well for the homeland in the long run.
> The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.
I get that sometimes a "broken" opponent is more useful than a dead one as they can sabotage the whole cause, like this article implies. But if you hold as much power as they did then it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
See "predictive policing", https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
> One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.” In just five years, Nocco’s signature program has ensnared almost 1,000 people.
I'm not sure if the Stasi disappeared people in an obvious or hidden manner though. Maybe they did it more frequently than modern states assassinations? In both cases it shows that the life of any person is not important to them - what's important is the effects an action causes.
The Stasi knew that power is never that absolute. The GDR was built upon the idea that is was good, not evil (like the West). You can't be good and regularly disappear public figures, especially those from intellectual cycles. Additionally, people were aware of the oppression as is. If the GDR would have simply disappeared people, there would have been revolts. Germans were too connected to the other reality.
Here is a popular song from that time
I think what I want,
and what makes me happy,
but all in silence,
and as it befits.
My wish and desire
no one can forbid,
it remains so:
thoughts are free.
...
And if they lock me up
in a dark dungeon,
all that is purely
futile work;
for my thoughts
tear through the barriers
and walls in two:
thoughts are free.
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I'm by no means an expert on the matter but as far as I know, the Stasi did not disappear political opponents regularly, at least not after Stalin's time. I looked over the article and didn't find that claim but if I missed it and it's in there, then the article is wrong about it. The Stasi had a large array of measures at disposal. Some people were cleared for moving out of the country to West Germany. Others went to prison. Some people were exposed to radioactive materials. Others got a better job that moved them away from other dissidents.
Specific "Zersetzungsmaßnahmen" you and the article mention were very rare - we're talking about an estimated few hundred to thousands cases in total. When they occurred, however, they were extremely devastating because not even experienced critics of the system imagined them. We're not just talking about switching socks and replacing good milk with spoiled one in the fridge. There were also cases of medical doctors prescribing the wrong drugs, for example, worsening the symptoms of diseases.
As far as I know, who became the victim of these special measures may not have been a fully rational decision. It seemed to be based to a large extent on the preferences of the case officers in charge.
Broader measures against critics of the system were far more common, however, and way more pervasive than what most people suspected at the time. For example, the father of a former girlfriend of mine was a famous GDR rock musician. He later found out from the archives that the Stasi planned and supervised his whole life and managed to break up his former band without anyone suspecting it. One guy moved somewhere else for work, another went to prison, and he moved elsewhere, too. There were also way more informants than he ever suspected. Basically, the Stasi and their informants interfered with what other artists he met, were he and his band mates got work, and so on. They planned over years. It went far beyond the usual method of giving people a telephone and letting them hear a loud click when the tape was switched on (they did that, too!).
> it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
Nevertheless, this happened. The Stasi was a huge bureaucratic organization with ideology at its core, built after the example of the KGB. Stasi officers considered themselves fully in the right, defending their people against counter-revolutionary and decadent activities. Goals ranged from "helping" citizens get on the right track towards socialism in a friendly but firm manner, over collecting information about potential adverse political activities, to completely destroying enemies of the state and doing counter-espionage.
I'm pretty sure that the intelligence services nowadays condone the contemporary identity politics revolution because it distracts people (especially the youth) from the actual problems of society.
I am old enough to remember the time where revolution meant actively fighting the oppressors or those in power, not posting on twitter about who has what between their pants and to which bathroom they should go to.
Despite decades of intense propaganda, killings of people in uprisings and the methods of Stasi as described in the article.
Even with all that effort most people didn't believe in the regime.
So it's hard to say whether the Stasi's tactics worked. Only people in the regimes like Ceausescu and Honecker actually thought people liked it. And perhaps not even them.
'We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.'
There is an interesting book called 'Not Born Yesterday' that points out that people are pretty skeptical .
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45358676-not-born-yester...
30 years on, the political landscape is still a disaster. Media is a shit show in the hands of a few. A lot of the older people (40+) long for the "good old days". A lot of the young have ran away for better opportunities. Democratic participation is very low.
The fall of the Communist regimes and subsequent liberalisation and democratisation were managed incredibly poorly in most of those countries. Yes, standards of living are much better, but if you ask a lot of the people, things are worse (because they're incapable of introspection, have been fed propaganda on Facebook and shit media, etc).
Everyone else was just kept in line. They set up both positive and negative incentives. Be neutral and you can live an OK life. Be a good communist and you can climb socially. Meet your West German uncle too often, or don't show up to the Labor Day parade and get a threatening talk. Actually voice your opposition to the regime and you may well find yourself in a Stasi torture prison.
Socialist doctrine said that socialism would be so good that people would soon(TM) embrace it organically. Of course they didn't, because it never delivered on anything and some western media still made it behind the iron curtain. Seeing a western supermarket shelf while you had to bribe someone to get spare parts for your washing machine is stronger than any propaganda.
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If the CCP did, how many of them would get elected ?
Informants and spies are almost always those at the top of your group, they are the leaders, the ones with the money, the ones with the van, the people with the time to help out, to print your flyers, the people who can organise and transport. Spies are going to be the people above you that you trust. Spies will be your friends. In the UK, police informants even fathered children with members of their infiltrated groups! They are not going to be the new strange people who join and are look nervous but who make excellent and easy scape goats. States want the maximum value for their intelligence, the spies are going to be at the top of your group.
The article suggests one way around it, to have flat organisations: to not have leaders. It gives resilience if when a person is compromised the group can continue, or when there is no leader the amount of information or damage that leader can cause would be less. Another way potentially would be the cell format, used in some of the worst terrorist groups, only operate in cells of 5 or less and only one of those in each small group have contact with only 1 other cell.
Without a strong voice, the movement devolves into contradictory platforms, which results in no action.
> Do you know how many people we uncovered?