They were very common in East Germany: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/east-german-domestic-surveillance-went-far-beyond-the-stasi-a-1042883.html h

They were very common in East Germany: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/east-german-domestic-surveillance-went-far-beyond-the-stasi-a-1042883.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/east-german-dome... >East German Snitching Went Far Beyond the Stasi >Everyone knows about the Stasi and the extent to which it spied on the East German populace. But that was only a small part of the informing that went on. New research shows that snitching was vastly more common than previously thought. Conducting a token sale without getting approval from the SEC is exactly the kind of "economic crime" that the East German citizenry would be snitching on today if East Germany had survived to this day.