Surveillance Societies Past and Future: It’s Much Easier, Cheaper Today Than in the Old Days

Surveillance societies used to enlist armies of listeners, spies or double agents. German and Eastern European societies before and during World War II, the Soviet Union under Stalin, communists to follow, and to a lesser extent American society during the Cold War, especially during the McCarthy period, depended on a climate of fear and paranoia.

The Russian poster above from the 1950s depicts the atmosphere of distrust. “”Blabbing helps the enemy!”

Budapest, Hungary’s House of Terror and the Franz Kafka Museum in Prague, which I visited in 2016, depict some of the worst excesses of surveillance societies.