Secret police and the maintenance and extension of power through internal/external covert ops seem to be an inevitable feature of government at any scale. Rome

Secret police and the maintenance and extension of power through internal/external covert ops seem to be an inevitable feature of government at any scale. Rome had the Frumentarii, and there are examples from Persia, China, and Sparta. These were overt empires run by emperors. What we've had since the end of WWII is a covert empire directed by an informal pseudo-government of oligarchs, hidden under a veneer of democracy. In the UK the Crown never changed its mind about internal adversaries, as the recent "spycops" inquiry shows. https://www.spycops.co.uk/ https://www.spycops.co.uk/