Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (London: The Folio Society, 2016) (I read this less as about government surveillance under a communist totalitarian/police state, but more general as life under totalitarian.police states generally. One should wonder, with the essentially unrestricted access the government has to digital information, are not we all potentially being watched continually? The can GPS track you by your car, phone or laptop signal. The can track where you shop, what you purchase, how you entertain yourself, etc. And your emails can be hacked. Not to mention the crap you post about yourself on Facebook. No need for the men standing in dark corners watching you. No need to have your friends and coworkers spy on you. It can all be done electronically. Though the government does encourage you to watch for terrorist activity, which means watch your neighbors. And there are those neighborhood watchers like Zimmerman. Democracy is threatened when citizens view each other as suspect. Freedom, privacy, pursuit of happiness, etc., are just a words after all, unless one actively protects them for oneself and for others.).
A film to view is Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006).
