http://www.dw.de/east-german-stasi-had-189000-informers-stud...
"About one in 100 East Germans was an informer for communist East Germany's secret police in 1989, according to a new study. Political ideology was their main motivation, both in East and West Germany... According to the report, political ideals served as the primary motivation for people to turn in their neighbors, friends and acquaintances to the secret police. Financial incentives played only a minor role and blackmail was rare."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24...
"5.1 million Americans have security clearances. That’s more than the entire population of Norway... About 5.1 million people — or more than 1.5 percent of the population — held security clearances last year."
Security clearance is a poor proxy for whether or not someone is involved with the security services.
A lot of people obtain security clearances because of jobs that brings them only in cursory contact with anything secret, either because it is a requirement, or because it is a hassle not to.
E.g. I once did a two week contract for a Norwegian defence research group. The stuff I worked on was not restricted in any way, but the only reason I didn't have to be put through security clearance procedures was that they were in too much of a rush and opted for the inconvenient alternative:
One of the senior developers spent two weeks "babysitting" me: Despite working from an office in a wing of the building that housed no high security projects, he had to follow me around wherever I went. Including standing outside the toilets whenever I had to go, and follow me when I went to lunch.
Last time I checked, every commissioned officer in the military gets at minimum a Secret clearance. Per Wikipedia that's 236,826 in 2010 in the active military, add the reserves and I'd assume it's over 300K.
If the security services in East Germany thought you weren't secure, you'd be working menial jobs for life, if you weren't in prison. In the USA, is a "security clearance" necessary to go to university? To work as a doctor?
There's a bit in the film "The Lives of Others", where a neighbour sees the Stati agent install bugs. The agent tells the neighbor that if she tells the target he's being bugged, then her daughter will lose her place in university. One of the characters in the film is a director of plays. He has "lost his security clearance" for critiquing the regime, was blacklisted and couldn't work.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24... "5.1 million Americans have security clearances. That’s more than the entire population of Norway... About 5.1 million people — or more than 1.5 percent of the population — held security clearances last year."