What should the secret police/internal security service look like in a proletarian democracy?
I'll start off by saying that I'm mainly addressing this question to those with similar views on socialism and democracy. Namely those of us who are Marxists and hold broadly typical Marxist ideas of the state/DotP, but who consider the Soviet style states to have been overly oppresive and despotic (Personally, I lean towards something like Cockshott's proposal of a sortition-based democracy). That's not to devalue the opinions of Anarchists or "Stalinists," it's just that everyone already knows where they stand on this. The latter oppose any kind of state repression, while the latter believe that NKVD style organizations were not so bad and/or were justified in their conduct, and could simply be replicated as such. In other words, both would reject the premise of this discussion and so would turn it into a completely different one.
With that out of they way, here's the topic I want to discuss. Any socialist revolution, however popular, will surely be threatened by espionage from foreign powers and domestic counterrevolutionary elements; this is all the more true for small, encircled countries. Additionally, it will have to deal with threats faced by even non-socialist states, like religious terrorists, organized crime, etc. It will be necessary to fight these with state power. However, secret police agencies in "really-existing-socialist" regimes were often counterproductive to communist and humane ideals in that they tore apart social bonds, abused their power, were unaccountable to the people, terrorized honest citizens, eliminated privacy, and So how do we protect the workers' state while avoiding these evils? Note that I'm talking about long-term institutions that would exist for decades, in "ordinary" times. An extreme situation like a civil war may require (or at least, render forgiveable) more extreme or spontaneous forms of terror that would be undesirable in normal circumstances.
Below, I'll present and explore some historical methods of domestic intelligence from both the socialist and capitalist worlds. Which of these do you think would be appropriate to a really democratic workers' state, and how should they be used? What checks should be put on the system to keep it under control?
-The "classic" Soviet model: a centralized, top-down, and ruthless secret police that is not constrained by the rule of law. It spreads fear through the population, and builds a network of informants through material incentives and other means. Its autonomous nature allows it to stay secretive, and it's more or less succesful at destroying actual enemies, but with collateral damage I've already discussed. I've already made views on this system clear, so I won't repeat them.
-Mass collective surveillance; the Cuban model: exemplified by Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Organizes a large share of the population to inform on fellow citizens. Participatory and perhaps even decentralized, but local bodies mainly execute priorities defined by the top. Committees can punish reputed counterrevolutionaries by derailing their careers, denying higher education, etc. Actually, you could compare it to that (troll?) thread in the catalog about the "proletarian panopticon." This model (as we know it) is basically incompatible with privacy, and creates a chilling effect in the public sphere. It's been criticized for attracting and enabling petty, power-hungry individuals to unfairly interfere in people's lives; kind of like if HOAs had the power to get you fired.
-COINTELPRO tactics/Zersetzung: Most famously used by the FBI and the later Stasi. It involves infiltrating putatively subversive organizations and tearing them apart from the inside before they can take off; heavy use of psychological manipulation. Basically what the feds did to the BPP, the third Klan, etc. By all indications this is a very effective, if ruthless, way to destroy political organizations.
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