Literal SS divisions and Bandera's band of sadistic mass murderers were not right wing extremists according to the German government, nor are the Azov thugs with swastika tattoos, and anyone who dares to challenge this official narrative is a left wing extremist, Putinist, and an enemy of freedom and democracy. This is not an exaggeration, you can look this up: all the actual (non-socdem) left wing parties in Germany are on government watch lists and are considered a threat against the constitutional order. But they dare to claim that the DDR was a totalitarian police state. The BRD is just a continuation of Nazi Germany.
I agree, and as well I think it's relevant to consider what was historically considered invasive and omnipresent at that point in history is not necessarily the same as now.
I guess I'm thinking, like, are current governments similarly using the full extent of surveillance? And is it something knowable? As well, how's the investment and expansion of that surveillance been done then and now?
We know what technology has made possible. Phones can be turned on at the government's request. DNS servers can log everyone's activities. ISP's can monitor what IP addresses one can go to. Phone conversations can also be monitored by police with sting rays. Medical records can be transferred by bad actors because of holes in the HIPAA rules that don't protect privacy.
The beehive exists: https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/ where they store all kinds of data, including encrypted can be monitored. Also now quantum computing has been unlocked by both the US and China so many forms of encryption can be cracked.
Literal SS divisions and Bandera's band of sadistic mass murderers were not right wing extremists according to the German government, nor are the Azov thugs with swastika tattoos, and anyone who dares to challenge this official narrative is a left wing extremist, Putinist, and an enemy of freedom and democracy. This is not an exaggeration, you can look this up: all the actual (non-socdem) left wing parties in Germany are on government watch lists and are considered a threat against the constitutional order. But they dare to claim that the DDR was a totalitarian police state. The BRD is just a continuation of Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, we are now under infinitely more invasive and omnipresent surveilance than anything the Stasi ever did.
I agree, and as well I think it's relevant to consider what was historically considered invasive and omnipresent at that point in history is not necessarily the same as now.
I guess I'm thinking, like, are current governments similarly using the full extent of surveillance? And is it something knowable? As well, how's the investment and expansion of that surveillance been done then and now?
We know what technology has made possible. Phones can be turned on at the government's request. DNS servers can log everyone's activities. ISP's can monitor what IP addresses one can go to. Phone conversations can also be monitored by police with sting rays. Medical records can be transferred by bad actors because of holes in the HIPAA rules that don't protect privacy.
The beehive exists: https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/ where they store all kinds of data, including encrypted can be monitored. Also now quantum computing has been unlocked by both the US and China so many forms of encryption can be cracked.
West Germany previously too had much more expensive and expansive oppression aparatus than East but somehow East is called "totalitarian".
They put people back in concentration camps ffs, and put nazis back in charge
I think Honecker was in the same prison in the 90s as the Nazis put him in in the 1930s.
Moabit specificially. IIRC, he even was in the same cell.
also they kept up the nazi euthanasia of the disabled in the American controlled portions of west germany for quite some time
They paid pensions to nazis but refused to pay compensation to LGBT concentration camp victims.