Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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> Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration, disproved by the many criminals (arguably the the existence of otherwise traceable crimes) and people under surveillance who regularly get away?

It's proven by the many people that were picked up before they could make their attempt because the VoPo's picked up on that before they could actually do it.

These guys would happily turn in their mothers if that's what it took to rise in the ranks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkspolizei

A bit of 'big data' (to use a popular buzzword) magic would have turned up the names of the two buyers of fabric from the story linked in mere seconds.

Your experience with passengers exiting planes is probably not comparable unless it is in a country like Israel or North Korea. Keep in mind that it wasn't that the police was looking to stop particular people at the border but that they were simply trying to stop everybody from leaving (which tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands would have done if given the opportunity)

I've written a bit about what it was like to be in Communist Poland here:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist...

Joke from the era:

Erich Honecker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Honecker) has been abroad for a state visit and returns home. Upon reaching Berlin looking out from the windows of the aircraft he notices that the streets seem very quiet. After landing this is confirmed, they drive around for hours on end without encountering a single soul. Finally, in desperation they drive up to the Berlin wall and search along side it, when they reach a very large gaping hole in the middle. Next to the hole is a wooden post with an envelope stapled to it, addressed to Honecker. He opens it and finds a note inside:

"Honecker, du bist der letzte, mach bitte das Licht aus...".

Thanks for the joke. I assume all the Soviet bloc countries were like this. Having lived in Romania during its communist years, it seemed that every single person who was not a communist wanted to leave or at least thought about it. After my parents managed to get out and get to the US, we met a lot of others from various Eastern European countries as well as Russia who all had pretty incredible stories of escape. I think for others who had not been there, it's incredibly difficult to imagine the conditions that would lead people, including people with families and small children, to literally risk their lives (or at least torture and jail) to get out, oftentimes without their children, not knowing if they would ever make it or see their family ever again. If there is a "hell," I doubt it's worse than communism.

Another aspect rarely in the spotlight is the fate of the close family members of those that left successfully.

Communist, totalitarian, fascist, they're all just variations of thugocracy.

The US government operates a surveillance infrastructure beyond the wildest wet dreams of the Stasi and their ilk, beyond all practical oversight. It attracts people to work for it who think that's a good thing, including the lack of oversight. We're expected to trust them. We know that secrecy promotes laziness, and is used to hide ineptness, incomptence, greed and crime.

Some are no doubt outright thugs. Some probably believe the infrastructure as it exists and is evolving is a good thing. Either way, they're burning the village to save it, and they're using the Constitution as tinder.

This is an invalid comparison: the US government, unlike the Stasi, doesn't pay your neighbors to spy on you, doesn't interrogate your wife and children about you, doesn't bug your home without a good reason, and doesn't even record your calls (only the meta data).

Neither would the Stasi if they had this. They would do exactly what the US is doing. Modern surveillance has eliminated the middleman. "Come work for the NSA and disrupt surveillance!"

Here's a joke told in the movie The Lives of Others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8vDQaAYaQg

I think I saw the movie on Vudu. It's a very moving story about the secret police, and the people they spy on. Really, watch it. As others have said, we're not so far away from this in time, and there are many, many people who lived through it.

For non-German speakers, the joke's punchline is "Honecker, you are the last to leave, please turn out the lights."

It sounds much better in German of course :)

"Honecker, du bist der letzte, mach bitte das Licht aus..."

I think there's a little typo, it should be "macht". Then it yields the sentence "Honecker, you're the last, please turn off the lights."

"mach" is imperative singular, "macht" is imperative plural. So "mach bitte das Licht aus" is addressing Honecker directly (which is most likely intended here), where "macht bitte das Licht aus" would also address the people with him.

"mach" is the imperative form of "machen" and perfectly fine in that sentence in the sense of "Honecker, please turn of the lights!".

With "macht" the sentence would be more of an observation and the "bitte" (please) would sound weird: "Honecker please turns of the light."

Edit: as tazjin stated "macht" can also be used to address the whole group.

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