Secret police

A secret police is an agency of the executive branch, to which the activities of the police and intelligence are connected.

The purpose of a secret police is to protect the political power of a dictator or an authoritarian government. Many secret police are de facto or de jure outside a constitutional control. Often such secret police to persecute political opponents, or so-called " enemies of the state " are used.

Their methods range from intimidation over confiscation of property, arbitrary arrest or abduction, disappearances, disinformation, to operation its own prisons and detention centers, torture and killing of opponents. Secret police can not be as readily identifiable as a special unit embedded in otherwise engaged as intelligence organizations and to outsiders. They are usually responsible only a single executive body against. You can develop a life of its own with respect to objectives and delimitation of areas of activity to other government agencies without knowledge of their actual line under certain circumstances.

Known secret police organizations were or are

  • The Okhrana of Tsar Alexander III. ,
  • The Gestapo in Nazi Germany,
  • The Ministry of State Security of the GDR,
  • The Seguridad del Estado ( State Security ) of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior,
  • The Bureau for the Suppression of Communist activities ( Buro de Actividades de represion Comunistas / BRAC ) in Cuba under Fulgencio Batista,
  • The Státní bezpečnost ( StB ) Czechoslovakia,
  • The sluzba Bezpieczeństwa ( SB) in the People's Republic of Poland,
  • The UDBA in SFR Yugoslavia
  • The Securitate in Romania,
  • The PIDE ( International State Security Police ) in Portugal before 1974,
  • Parts of the KGB in the Soviet Union and the successor organization FSB in Russia today.
  • News agency
  • Organization of the police
  • Dictatorship
Power (social and political) Enemy of the state Estado Novo (Portugal)
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