That article was full of flagrant abuses of the 4th Amendment. Hell, I’ve ridden the military troop train across the East German and Berlin border areas during the Cold War with less hassle than the story told in the article.
As a kid in the 1970s, I went with my dad to East Berlin from Munich. There were no problems, but I thought it was interesting that they had 1st 2nd and 3rd class compartments in the East German utopia.
Then, when we visited East Berlin and came back to West Berlin via the metro, we never passed through any checkpoints entering or exiting the subway- weird.
We are definitively entering a police state with unconceivable surveillance capabilities. It’s too bad that at this point opting out is very difficult. Perhaps as the economy declines, the new gestapo agents will be open to bribery as is common in Latin American countries. However, we will need a cultural shift because these agents are brainwashed to support tyranny and they are into the power trip.
The corruption of a totalitarian state is one way to reduce tyranny.