4 ms·
One of RG major role was allowing local informations to go upstream so that politics knew what was going on outside of their ivory tower. Since they were operat
by Algent 8y ago
One of RG major role was allowing local informations to go upstream so that politics knew what was going on outside of their ivory tower. Since they were operating using local branches it was a sure way to get first hand informations.
Of course to do their jobs they had to keep files on anyone or anything relevant.
Could this be potentially misused ? Definitely. But it had a pretty good reason of existing.
After they got merged they lost most of their local branch and got retasked. Meaning the government have to rely more on second hand data and can more easily fall prey to falsified informations. The truth is a little more complicated than that but it was indeed a really useful tool.
- GlobalFrog 8y agoCompletely true. And moreover, it is now acknowledged that the failure to stop the terrorist attacks in the recent years comes for a part from the RG having been nearly disbanded. They were far from being an agency which only spied on public figures, they were in fact a very important tool for gathering information at a local level, which was badly missed to have first hand intel on extremists. Their bad reputation came mostly from the 60s-70s when they were targeting a lot the labor unions who had connections with the Soviet Union.