Why You Should Resist Surveillance
I got to visit the Stasi museum in Berlin this week, and it gave me a newfound appreciation for why it’s important to resist surveillance. Interestingly, surveillance is not exclusively limited to one kind of government: it can appeal to both left- and right-wing governments, and corporations in the digital age use surveillance to make money. In every form, surveillance is evil and must be resisted.
For those of you who don’t know, the Stasi were the secret police of the communist regime in East Germany. They employed massive resources to spy upon and surveil East German citizens, and they kept careful track of anyone who showed signs of dissatisfaction with the state. They employed massive numbers of informal collaborators—mere citizens—who would spy on their neighbors and report back to the Stasi.
I got to go there with my dad, and he remarked on how much of a drag on the economy the Stasi must have been. Think of it: the country funneled incredibly vast resources into spying on its own citizens and for what? It was claimed to be a protection against domestic terrorists and the like, but in reality, the Stasi was oppressing and discouraging anyone who might be disgruntled with those in power and the way they were running things.
