By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026East Germany spied on its people because the system was so unjust and cruel that its beneficiaries understood that their neighbors forever on the brink of rising up against them. 50/ 213812
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026East Germany's leaders were right about that - but if anything, they didn't put *enough* people onto the spying project. We can tell, because the Berlin Wall fell in 1989! 51/ 11163
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026Of course, the GDR was *already* paying *more than 1.2% of its population* to spy on everyone else. It's likely that East Germany's leaders believed that their society simply lacked the fiscal space to hire more spies, even if short-staffing the Stasi risked societal collapse. 52/ 21102
