Authoritarian governments have long drawn ordinary citizens into political surveillance. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union encouraged denunciations. East Germany’s secret police service, the Stasi, embedded informants in workplaces and neighbourhoods.
From 1960, Cuba’s leaders organised local committees to monitor political dissent. And informant culture is so embedded in everyday Iranian life that there are common Persian terms to describe it. A mokhber or khabarchin is an informant and a zirabzan secretly passes private information to the authorities, often to damage someone.
