Former Stasi Reaction to NSA “You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true”

[Just Saying]

8. No, intelligent people get offended because it's hyperbole.

BERLIN — At its height, the Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, employed one full-time agent for every 63 East German citizens. Taking into account unofficial informers, one out of every seven people in the communist country collaborated, in some capacity, with the secret police. There is probably no population, in all of human history, which lived under greater surveillance than those citizens of the former German Democratic Republic.
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For all the complaints about the NSA, neither Snowden nor any of his enablers in the media have pointed to any illegality or wrongdoing, a far cry from the daily excesses of the Stasi, which operated at the behest of a dictatorial political system not beholden to any sort of democratic will. Snowden and his allies cannot point to a single instance in which the NSA spying has hurt an innocent person.

Another crucial difference is the purpose of these intelligence services. The Stasi was created to monitor and, more importantly, control an entire citizenry living under the rule of a one-party state. The Stasi, “sword and shield” of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party, existed solely to keep that party in power, not to protect individuals. Information gleaned by the Stasi was used to defame, imprison and kill those who showed the slightest divergence from the party line.
The same can hardly be said about the NSA, which has operated continuously under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, in a country where people can say whatever they wish about the government without fear of disappearing in the dead of night.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/absurd-attempts-call-nsa-american-stasi-article-1.1400317#ixzz2buCw3fYs