TEDxSalford

Feeling Snow-den by Surveillance State Secrets

Humans have always been interested in the lives of others, whether peeking over the fence to see what the Jones’ are up to, listening in on a conversation you’re perhaps not supposed to be listening to, or reading something that wasn’t meant for your eyes. Depending on the situation, you can pass it off as innocent; it’s not like you’re delving deep into the details of this person’s life.

However, just like a lot of things with humanity, this subject also comes with a darker side, something that’s been long intertwined with history and something that does take the ‘innocent’ snooping of our peers into a different realm – surveillance.

History is littered with governments overstepping the line of keeping a tab on its people for security, to outright invasion. One of which is the infamous Stasi government of West Germany, which for over 40 years became one of the most controlling and invasive powers of the modern era.

Hubertus Knabe’s TED talk (Berlin, June 2014) explores this very era and guides us through a frightening tale of what life was like for the East German people after the Second World War, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Knabe takes us into a world of double-crossing, defecting, surveillance and almost a class in psychological control, that isn’t just scary because of how powerful it was, but because of all the patterns you can see between that and today’s world.

 Perhaps you have watched the movie “The Lives of Others.” This movie made the Stasi known worldwide … we live in an age where words such as “surveillance” or “wiretapping” are on the front pages of newspapers.

Knabe’s talk advises us that the roots of the Stasi stem from Russia and through the KGB, and that the set up and early modelling of the secret East German police was essentially created as an extra arm of the Russian communist party. Not to conform to national stereotype, but we’re told that due to the efficiency of the Germans, it only took five years for the Stasi to officially form, and for control to be handed over to them from the Russians. It was from here on in that their power and control grew and grew.

 In fact, the secret police of Russia were the creator and instructor of the Stasi. When the Red Army occupied East Germany in 1945, it immediately expanded there, and soon it started to train the German Communists to build up their own secret police.

By 1953, the Stasi had more employees than the Gestapo, and it wasn’t just in numbers that the Stasi impressed – it was also in organisation. For example, they made sure that all departments were kept separate from each other to avoid one member knowing too much, and despite the lack of technology available they were able to wiretap, follow and photograph their targets without them realising. Their power was also helped due to their ability to turn people against each other. They were known as a ‘state within a state’ and they put in people the fear and knowledge that you weren’t able to trust anyone, and that at any time you could be arrested on the streets for any signs of protest.

There are of course many lands and nations which have fallen (or are currently falling) under these types of regimes, but the Stasi is a good example of just how effective an organisation can be in controlling its people – which, as citizens of a more open society, we sometimes fail to remember just what life has been and could be like if we let governments take full control.

 If one agent quit the Stasi, his knowledge was very small. Contrast that with Snowden, for example.

It would be impossible to talk about this subject without referencing two now very famous people – Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Assange and the site ‘Wikileaks’ really came into public awareness in 2007, and ever since they have been providing documentary evidence of the wrongdoings and corruptions of various governments and organisations. From a Peruvian oil scandal, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to surveillance states (in which America has taken quite a battering) – tie this in with the NSA scandal and the introduction of whistle-blower Edward Snowden and this leaves us somewhere quite unique.

Where you have oppressive regimes, you also have people who fight and will not be oppressed and will do everything in their power to bring to light the injustice of the society around them. Throughout history you will find many other examples of this, but with the NSA revelations and the force of Wikileaks, the 21st century has brought with it a power that we didn’t used to have over the watchers – and this is why we are now living in such a pivotal time in our history.

The Arab Spring showed how technology can be used to topple oppressive regimes, but what if that regime don’t use physical threats? What if the oppression comes through backdoor ways, psychological tactics, or through lying and deceiving its people? With people like Assange and Snowden, and through the increasing power of the internet and Wikileaks and sites like it, yes, surveillance will continue and governments will, in the name of fear and terror happily use such excuses to overstep their mark and abuse their powers.

 There’s a difference of why you are collecting this data. Are you doing that for protecting your people against terrorist attacks, or are you doing that for oppressing your people?

However, in perhaps a slightly overdramatised way, the hunters have become the hunted and the surveillance state is slowly having the camera turned on itself. We haven’t liked what we’ve seen so far and the anger at these revelations is worldwide, thanks to people like Knabe who study the past and help us understand what we went through. As well as leaders like Assange and Snowden, who help us to understand the benefits of action we might soon see ourselves on a road to a better future.

Granted, we don’t help ourselves by posting our lives through social media and blogging, although that is a choice we’ve made, and a choice on what we want seen. Those that use the “if you’ve got nothing to hide…” argument are missing the point – it’s about living your life in safety and not in fear of a power you can’t see, a power you can’t control and a power who sees you as a number rather than a person. It’s about having ownership of your life and everything you do and not living under a regime who has power and control over your friends and family, hidden behind security cameras and online surveillance.

The hope is that one day historians will look back on our society and study us like Knabe studied the Stasi, and ponder on how a government could constantly get away with so much, but happy in the knowledge that the people were free, and justice was sought.

Who knew the lives of others would be so interesting?