Evading Secret Police: Counterintelligence Vulnerabilities in Authoritarian States

Abstract

The authoritarian impulse has characterized human governance through most of recorded history, and popular resistance to the same has waxed and waned with the intellectual currents and conditions of the day. There is little in the open literature, however, that considers the common counterintelligence vulnerabilities of contemporary authoritarian states. Growing out of the traditional authoritarianisms, our century is seeing the emergence of a modern authoritarianism characterized by technology-infused surveillance states whose new vulnerabilities are now emerging.