The Exchange of Freedom for Security

I used to work at a prominent brokerage house next to a girl that grew up in the old GDR - that's East Germany to you and me. As a little girl in the early 1980's her family was able to get out and escape to the West. She told me that before their escape her uncle and a few other relatives were rounded up by the Secret Police known as the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). She never saw most of them again. So how were these freedom-loving people caught while planning their family's escape? Wiretapping and neighbors spying on neighbors.So in what direction does the United States