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In 1950 the Stasi was formed in East Germany by the newly formed German Democratic Republic (DDR), and became one of the most successful intelligence services in history. They kept detailed files on everyone by use of secret informants everywhere. This created an atmosphere of fear and unease. Informers kept watchful eyes on the comings and goings of others in their area, recording times and dates of an individual's movements and with whom an individual was associated. This was labor intensive. The man on the street corner with his little notebook and pencil could only do so much. Nevertheless, it was surprising how much information was gathered on individual citizens. The materials kept on citizens were wide-ranging: audio files, photographs, film reels and millions of paper records. The Stasi was disbanded when the DDR collapsed.
In 2017 Flock Safety, a for-profit private surveillance company was formed by Garrett Langley, Matt Feury, and Paige Todd bringing Stasi style surveillance to America. The informants have changed. The man on the street corner has been replaced by over 80,000 (and growing) AI driven cameras that stand unblinking everywhere. Cameras can be found on street corners, in shopping center parking lots, at entrances to gun ranges or gun shows, near various types of clinics, at protest sites, places of worship--literally everywhere. Once in image is captured it is saved in a private searchable database under control of Flock Safety. Participating Law Enforcement Agencies are given access to the database and can do powerful searches to gain information on individuals or groups.
Like the Stasi, Garrett Langley collects information about everyone, not just criminals or those suspected of a crime. Now the same chilling effect of civil liberties present during the reign of the Stasi is a concern across America as individual privacy is eroded by Garrett's snooping cameras that not only read license plates, but do facial recognition capture audio and more. The question that must be asked is: Should every individual's movements, habits, associations and personal data be collected, analyzed and distributed, to possibly catch the relatively few criminals among us? Wouldn't it be more effective for everyone to provide the police with DNA samples and fingerprints? The Garret Langleys of the world would likely answer "Yes", and maybe they would be better accepted in places where civil liberties do not exist and oppression is a way of life. Places like North Korea, Iran or China.
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