I don't think you can compare small tribes watching each other with the current situation where someone with access to surveillance systems can record all movem

I don't think you can compare small tribes watching each other with the current situation where someone with access to surveillance systems can record all movements in a whole country and get them analyzed automatically. Surveillance used to be expensive and cost a lot of effort but increasingly it can be done more complete and cheaper. The world may look differently if previous dictators had had the surveillance systems of today or the near future in their hands.