Seriously, the Deep State's domestic surveillance tools are beyond the old communists' dreams today :-/

Remember the Stasi also had Eyes and Ears everywhere, human ones. That's probably worse than the electronic surveillance because the paranoia of citizens would be through the roof as they knew they were being spied on with people by their neighbours,friends and relatives. You could not trust anyone not even a spouse.
Electronic surveillance is more capable of extracting information deeply hidden but the old "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" is supposed to make it all alright and has made way to many people complacent about the level of intrusion that is occurring into individual privacy.

The depth is worrisome because it lets them pick targets off early, which combined with corrupt entities like Facebook and Google, has been underway for a while. But the magnitude of the data available now - with bots and predictors and analytical algorithms - probably outstrips the snoopy biddie on the first floor, because like Zuckerberg likes to boast, they can in many respects now claim to know you better than you do yourself. Plus even that longitudinal thing.

Honnecker would have still been jealous :-/

Yes, we could go on couldn't we. It's a subject few people want to know about. You explain to someone what facebook is doing with their data and anything you want about the situation and they are pretty well like, i dont care.

Also FYi etc this next paragraph may have some interest to you if your into stuff Associated with surveillance. A friend of mine has a wife in China who for at least a month has told him she cannot communicate with WeChat or other Media only google gmail. She still hasn't told why because obviously they are monitoring her comms. She was also directed that she couldn't get time off in January as anticipated. This is the 3rd time such has occurred and what we have learnt from this is that the ChiComms restrict movement of Government Employees whenever they are having some crisis within country. Confirmed obviously by the Corona outbreak and the time before at a critical point in Trade deal. The reasons usualy seem weak but not to them and obviously not this time. We think she is involved in some kind of relocation move but wont find out anything until she is seen in person..