You just assume that every electronic communication is dragneted now. Your phone, your car radio's bluetooth radio, toll transponder, alpr, everything.

What I like about the signals-intelligence-only focus is that I can leave my phone at home, hop on an ebike with a legally mandated helmet obscuring my face from cameras, and I'm completely invisible to the state. I just don't exist. Unlike East Germany there's no HUMINT apparatus in the west or in China.