I don't know, how many people "disappeared" in the night. I don't think, that it where that many, but please correct me, when you have exact numbers. I know that many went to prison, but I just don't think, that to many "people just disappeared" -- the DDR was a bad state, but I just don't think that it was as bad, how some south american dictatorships where (where at times hundreds dissipated and where buried in mass graves).
I wrote that it was a joke, because what they used where paper folders of information, typed with typewriters. So they may have stored some GB of data about the people -- the NSA and other agencies store how much data? Petabytes? Or some magnitudes higher?
So the number of people spying may be less (and the methods still better -- remember: there are already cases, where ordinary people become victim of snatch squads in the US, because of some misunderstood Google searches), but the shear magnitude of data is much higher.
I wrote that it was a joke, because what they used where paper folders of information, typed with typewriters. So they may have stored some GB of data about the people -- the NSA and other agencies store how much data? Petabytes? Or some magnitudes higher?
So the number of people spying may be less (and the methods still better -- remember: there are already cases, where ordinary people become victim of snatch squads in the US, because of some misunderstood Google searches), but the shear magnitude of data is much higher.