The Stasi would've likely loved these tools, but I'm not sure they're necessary. The point of the Stasi behavior was to instill fear in the masses, to turn neighbor against neighbor. The fact that the average citizen today is hardly even aware of things like printer dots means it's serving a different purpose.

Then again, it could be argued that the need to instil fear in the masses arose precisely as they didn't have the resources to scrutinize all the people all the time. (

So they needed to make sure all the people expected to be under surveillance all the time, to keep them from doing anything undesirable (to the state, that is) while not being watched.)

IIRC the Stasi had a hard time connecting the dots (pun not intended) as the massive data sets mostly existed on file cards.

Today's problem is somewhat different: You've got loads of data, you've got the means to rapidly search and index it - but still, for some reason or the other, massive data collection doesn't appear to lead to much by way of desirable (to the populace, that is) results - actual terrorists apprehended, actual conspiracies unearthed, etc.

A cynic would assume that means the data is collected for other, more nefarious purposes. Cough.

I agree. Without moralizing on the motives, it seems like the objective of establishing an institution like the Stasi is control. If you can have that control with a velvet glove and spare the resentment so much the better.

In a Person of Interest episode an ex-Stasi officer was amazed by surveillance cameras, "These small cameras ... they're extraordinary. The Stasi would have killed for this technology!"

Fun-fact: The Stasi installed Caesium-based gamma ray scanners in some border checkpoints. To this day no one knows for sure how strong the radiation exposure was.