Isn’t this one of the tools used by the National Socialists of the German Reich, the informer spying on family members and acquaintances to tattle on them to the authorities?
Pretty effective, too, as it found a lot of “plotters” in the general public, and effectively squelched their activities before they offered much real threat to the command-and-control regime.
Sometimes the “squelch” was a kidnapping, followed by a secret imprisonment or a bullet to the back of the head.
Whatever happened to Seth Rich?