Im going down to Stasiland behind a cloud

In the era of the Stasi there was an overarching NSA style apparatus. Projections  were mainly of 'grays and dour greens.'Citizen informants were networked nodes. These were the browser cookies of the time. But they were embedded not in a browser but in a physical world. This was when humans were computers, or computers were humans, have it as you will. It may have been an apex of sorts, though "the jury is still out." The platform as you might say was East Germany, or GDR  (1946-1990). To read more.