Privatizing the Police-State

Abstract

As the previous chapter suggested, the process of transforming the police state had a less visible dimension — rather than simply disappearing, it disintegrated through the privatization of its diverse resources. Those resources included highly skilled personnel, sensitive information, domestic and international contacts, personal data and secret police files, networks of secret informers, surveillance equipment and expertise, operational blueprints and technology, and economic enterprises set up by the secret services. Many of these resources were secret, so their privatization required covert actions, likely undertaken by both hidden actors and prominent figures engaged in behind-the-scenes activities.