In East Asia, the jinyiwei of the Ming Dynasty was founded in the 1360s by the Hongwu Emperor and served as the dynasty's secret police until the collapse of Ming rule in 1644. Originally, their main functions were to serve as the emperor's bodyguard and to spy on his subjects and report any plots of rebellion or regicide directly to the emperor. Over time, the organization took on law enforcement and judicial functions and grew to be immensely powerful, with the power to overrule ordinary judicial rulings and to investigate, interrogate, and punish anyone, including members of the imperial family. In 1420, a second secret police organization run by eunuchs, known as the dongchang, was formed to suppress suspected political opposition to the usurpation of the throne by the Yongle Emperor. Combined, these two organizations made the Ming Dynasty one of the world's first police states. In Europe, secret police organizations originated in 18th-century Europe after the French Revolution. Such operations were established in an effort to detect any possible conspiracies or revolutionary subversion. The peak of secret-police operations in most of Europe was 1815 to 1860, "when restrictions on voting, assembly, association, unions and the press were so severe in most European countries that opposition groups were forced into conspiratorial activities." The secret police of the Austrian Empire were particularly notorious during this period. After 1860, the use of secret police declined due to increasing liberalization, except in autocratic regimes such as the Russian Empire. In the Russian Empire, the secret police forces were the Third Section of the Imperial Chancery and then the Okhrana. After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union established the OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MVD, and KGB. In Nazi Germany, the Geheime Staatspolizei was used to eliminate opposition; as part of the Reich Main Security Office, it also was a vital organizer of the Holocaust. Although the Gestapo had a relatively small number membership, "it maximized these small resources through informants and a large number of denunciations from the local population." After the defeat of the Nazis, the East German secret police, the Stasi, likewise made use of an extensive network of civilian informers.
Functions and methods
and J. Michael Waller describe the secret police as central to totalitarian regimes and "an indispensable device for the consolidation of power, neutralization of the opposition, and construction of a single-party state." In addition to these activities, secret police may also be responsible for tasks not related to suppressing internal dissent, such as gathering foreign intelligence, engaging in counterintelligence, organizing border security, and guarding government buildings and officials. Secret police forces sometimes endure even after the fall of a totalitarian regime. Arbitrary detention, abduction and forced disappearance, torture, and assassination are all tools wielded by secret police "to prevent, investigate, or punish opposition." Because secret police typically act with great discretionary powers "to decide what is a crime" and are a tool used to target political opponents, they operate outside the rule of law. People apprehended by the secret police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment. Suspects may not receive a public trial, and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court-style show trial, or by a secret tribunal. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history, included the secret police of East Germany and PortuguesePIDE.
Control
A single secret service may pose a potential threat to the central political authority. Political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens writes that: "When it comes to their security forces, autocrats face a fundamental 'coercing dilemma between empowerment and control.... Autocrats must empower their security forces with enough coercing capacity to enforce internal order and conduct external defense. Equally important to their survival, however, they must control that capacity, to ensure it is not turned against them." Authoritarian regimes therefore attempt to engage in "coup-proofing". Two methods of doing so are increasing fragmentation and increasing exclusivity.
