>No, they could not monitor all conversations. They could only listen to as many calls as they had agents to listen to them. It was not possible for them to listen to everyone at once, nor could they use this as means of discovery. They had to suspect someone in the first place in order to decide to expend the human resources to listen to their calls.
I think you're taking this a bit too lightly. As a side topic, I am surprised to what extent state surveillance was a thing here in the telephone era.
The secret police had about 50k full-time agents, 600k double-agents and about 400k-500k informants. From a population of 18 mil, that's about 1 in 18. Consider an usual family. You have a brother or a sister, two parents, 4 aunts or uncles and 4 grandfathers. Odds were in favor of one of them being at least an informant.
For your community? There definitely was an informant or double agent among them. Just knowing that the threat is there has a massive effect in how people communicate and bond with each other, effects that can still be felt to this day.
I think you're taking this a bit too lightly. As a side topic, I am surprised to what extent state surveillance was a thing here in the telephone era.
The secret police had about 50k full-time agents, 600k double-agents and about 400k-500k informants. From a population of 18 mil, that's about 1 in 18. Consider an usual family. You have a brother or a sister, two parents, 4 aunts or uncles and 4 grandfathers. Odds were in favor of one of them being at least an informant.
For your community? There definitely was an informant or double agent among them. Just knowing that the threat is there has a massive effect in how people communicate and bond with each other, effects that can still be felt to this day.