Article Image

IPFS News Link • Police State

American STASI

• L. Reichard White - LewRockwell.Com

I've been traveling with Monica and another friend for several weeks on a gambling trip in Europe. Monica escaped communist Poland via a work visa to Sweden. She's fluent in English but won't talk to me. She tells me it's because I don't drink.

In Communist Poland, booze is the first line of defense against the Secret Police. "If they drink on duty, they might slip and reveal their 'secret identity'," Monica tells me.

We have a drink and everything's cool.

It isn't just in the movies. It really was standard operating procedure in the Soviet Block for the secret police to spy on everyone. The excuse was "national security" of course.

The East German STASI were, hands down, the world champs. Voluntarily or otherwise, about one in five East Germans spied on themselves and each other for the STASI. Which kept meticulous records.

And so the STASI had "leverage" on just about everyone. That is, they could take almost any citizen aside and tell them, "We know what you did last Summer. And Fall. In fact, last week with your secretary in room 23 at The Plaza. And if you want to keep your wife in the dark, we want you to [FILL_IN_THE_BLANK]."

And of course, there was much heavier "leverage" if someone broke one of the laws, rules, regulations, orders or controls — which was unavoidable because there were so many, they were so nebulous — and thus enforcement was so subjective. This gave even street-level enforcers unprecedented "leverage" over just about everyone.

Political leaders were especially popular targets. So the STASI essentially ran East Germany by blackmail. Sort of like the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover — but on steroids.

The effects of such pervasive surveillance are subtle until you realize what you're seeing. When I was first in Poland — before the Berlin Wall came down, marking the end of the Soviet Union — folks tended to walk just slightly hunched over with their shoulders sort of scrunched together. Every once in awhile, a furtive over-the-shoulder glance.

It was almost as if each person felt they were constantly being watched. I've sometimes had Griffin agents on my trail, so this was easy for me to understand. At first, I had to fight a tendency to see who was watching. Then I remembered Monica, booze — and the secret police.

But the Polish Secret Police — heck, even the STASI — were extremely handicapped compared to today. The folks they were "leveraging" didn't have cell phones for the STASI to record 24/7. Or as many laws, rules, regulations, orders, and controls "governing" their victims.

Here in the freest country in the world, both problems have been thoroughly solved. There are so many new laws, even Congress doesn't know how many it passed. There are about one million restrictions in The Code of Federal Regulations alone.

And more laws are passed every year. A lot more laws. For an approximation, ~40,000 new state laws took effect just at the beginning of 2012.

There are so many, according to Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, you unknowingly commit three felonies a day.


thelibertyadvisor.com/declare