Among Tom Clancy's novels is...

"The Cardinal of the Kremlin".  In that novel is a character named Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, who works for the GRU (the Soviet's Military Intelligence).  He is a mole for the CIA and when caught and imprisoned by the KGB, he refers to his interrogator as "Comrade Chekist".

That's because the Cheka was the predecessor of the KGB which has since given way to the current Federal Security Service or FSS.  All of these organizations that exist in repressive nations (and many not quite so repressive) have names or acronyms.  Some well known, some not so much.

Thanks to Hollywood most everyone knows the Mossad is Israel's intelligence agency.  But few know that there is a Shin Bet (internal security) and Aman (military intelligence) organization in the Israeli intelligence community.  I can't recall if Ben Affleck's film "Argo" mentioned SAVAK, which was the Shah of Iran's secret police until the 1979 coup.  "Zero Dark Thirty" uses the acronym ISI which is the acronym for Pakistan's intelligence agency.  Most familiar with France know of the Sûreté but France also has a DGSE.

The point of all this?  I saw a movie today that reminded me that we Americans take our rights and freedoms a bit too much for granted, compared to what goes on and used to go on in other nations.  This film was set in East Germany in 1980, when their Stasi was one of the most feared and repressive state security services ever.

In this film, a woman doctor commits the heinous crime of applying for an exit visa to West Germany to join her boyfriend.  As a result she loses her job in a prestigious hospital in Berlin and is more or less exiled to a provincial clinic.  Her career is for all intents and purposes, over.  She's followed, and when she disappears for a few hours she is subjected to a search of everything in her apartment, including her body cavities.

Outside of the U.S., "Miranda" is a woman's name, not the landmark case protecting our right to be free from self-incrimination before being advised of what our rights are.  Freedom of speech in Germany doesn't include espousing Nazism and it isn't the only nation to have a law like that.  We can move freely about the nation, going from state to state without worrying over borders.  Back in the day, within the Soviet Union, movement was very restricted and if you didn't have identity papers you were essentially non-existent.

When a police officer stops you in the U.S., he or she can't just arbitrarily search your car.  Oh they can, but without the appropriate probable cause, or a search warrant, any evidence they find pretty much can't be used against you.  Try telling the cop in Thailand that he can't search your car and you'll learn all about that nation's system of justice from inside a jail cell.  Hope you brought cash with you, because in a Thai jail, without money of your own, or from the outside, death from starvation is a high probability.

Perhaps we need to be reminded every once in a while not to take our freedoms for granted.  Films like the one I saw today are excellent reminders.