The rise of the Informer State

by Meredith Angwin, in The Electric Grandma

At this season, I get endless emails that claim that a Republican (or a Democratic) victory in the coming elections will be the end of America. That with such a victory, we will quickly descend into tyranny.

I disagree.  I think America will survive the next president, Republican or Democratic.

I worry more about governments passing laws that are impossible to obey. I worry about governments encouraging citizens to bring court cases against companies while evading the usual bulwarks against frivolous lawsuits. I worry about democracies becoming Informer States like East Germany when it was ruled by the Stasi, the dreaded Secret Service.

I think the trend is toward an Informer State. The trend frightens me more than our current poor assortment of presidential candidates frightens me. And of course, much of the trend depends on manipulating the rules about energy

Let’s start with Canada.

Oh, Canada

Pandreco (Energy IQ Substack) writes about a new law in Canada. This law encourages any six Canadian residents to launch a lawsuit against any company if they feel it is making false claims. False claims about what? Of course, you can guess. They have a right to sue if they feel the company has made false claims about avoiding climate or environmental damage.  Let me quote Pandreco extensively here from his post Oh, Canada:

(With slight paraphrases for clarity):

Firstly, the government added provisions that allow any six residents to launch a private action under the Competition Act rather than having to convince the Competition Bureau that a claim has merit (ie bypass the Competition Bureau). 

Thus: 

·  any six residents can bring a private action about any kind of environmental or climate related claim (that a company has made) about …(its) industry, processes, etc.

·   the burden of proof will be on the company to prove that their claims are accurate (the ‘reverse onus’), not on the complainant or the Competition Bureau to prove that (the company’s claims) are false.

·    the company must answer the accusation according to the ‘internationally recognized methodology’ as mentioned in the law.

There is no “internationally recognized methodology” for such claims. In this law, companies are guilty until they prove they are innocent. The criteria for innocence are impossible to determine. And people are encouraged to sue.

Encouraging citizens to accuse other citizens is a well-known aspect of totalitarian regimes.

Stasi in East Germany

Let’s look at the Informer State of East Germany. When our daughter, Julia Angwin, was writing her book on surveillance, she suddenly told us that she was going to Berlin for a while. (Her book is Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.) 

Julia had arranged to see the Stasi files. She was learning what the Stasi, the dreaded East German secret police, knew about their victims. In her book, she compared the Stasi’s knowledge to how much (for example) Google knows about its users.

Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. Google knows more about you than the Stasi knew about most of its suspects. After all, the Stasi had to rely on informants, phone taps, and other cumbersome spy methods. In contrast, most of us (including me) enter much of our personal data directly into Google.

But my point is not about data.  It is about surveillance. According to Dragnet Nation, the Stasi kept track of 4 million East Germans (about a quarter of the population). One in fifty of all adult East Germans worked for the Stasi in one way or another. East Germany was an Informer State, and Stasi was constantly recruiting more informants. 

Julia describes a low-level surveillance operation called an imforgang.  In an imforgang, Stasi started by finding some infraction on the part of an East German citizen. (Perhaps the person had been watching West German TV.) When confronted with his wrong-doing by the Stasi, the person would generally agree to be an informant for Stasi.  Nobody wanted to be on the bad side of the Stasi!

A system where everyone is either spied on or a spy keeps people in line.  Life becomes very frightening. That’s a feature of the policy.

The police can count on the fact that everyone is doing something wrong. The laws are not clear, and the government does not want them to be clear.

Vermont’s Clean Heat

In Canada, as Pandreco documents, any six residents can bring a climate-related claim about your industry. They don’t have to prove it. You will have to prove that the claim is not true. Everybody is probably doing something wrong.

In Vermont, things are not quite that bad. But we do have some very fierce and very unclear laws. Let’s start with the law called the Clean Heat Standard. This is a tax on fossil heating and is meant to be a way to phase out fossil heating.  The burden of the law falls most strongly on fuel suppliers.  I believe the legislature was hoping that regular citizens would not notice what was going on.

Rob Roper writes the Substack Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics. (Full disclosure, Roper was a strong ally while I was defending Vermont Yankee.)

Roper’s blog has been tracking the Clean Heat Standard.  He has a whole series of blog posts on it: this early one is a favorite of mine. Clean Heat Standard Exploding on the Launch Pad

As part of the new law, the fuel suppliers were given two weeks to fill out a form that asked for information that they can’t obtain.  Also, these two weeks were at their busiest season for fuel deliveries (late January). There was no way to file an extension.

Vermont Senator Dick McCormack quipped: “They want to be making deliveries to their customers during their peak season. We want less dependence on fossil fuels. Make it so they can’t deliver. That’s a dirty trick!” 

That was a joke. Or maybe not.

This law doesn’t care if the information is unobtainable.  The fuel dealers are required to fill out these forms.  Later they will have to follow up with more forms on corrective actions taken.  It’s the law!

Luckily, most Vermonters are fairly easygoing. I doubt that arrests and fines are close at hand for the fuel dealers.  This is just going to be one more painful misstep by our legislature. However, the new law does mean that the fuel dealers will be breaking the law regularly. No business owner wants to be in that position.

It’s still better than East Germany

Sometimes I get upset, but mostly I can just look at the Canadian situation and the Vermont situation and I say:

At least it’s not East Germany in the bad old days.

Indeed, some readers may be wondering why I am even comparing anything in the U.S. to the Stasi. It’s because of all those emails I receive.

Like everyone nowadays, I am barraged with emails claiming that our country will fall apart if Trump is elected, or our country will fall apart if Biden is elected. I’m tired of this simplistic posturing. I feel the real dangers are in our legal system. Legislatures are writing “heads I win, tails you lose” laws. Governments are encouraging lawsuits in a way that reminds me of encouraging people to inform against their neighbors.

My advice is to vote for the person you want to vote for. The country will be okay, no matter who wins.

But challenge destructive and unenforceable laws.