History Main / SecretPolice

** It is hinted that Celestia might have had a secret police during the Classical Era. But the name that the narrator gives the organization, "Celestia Watermelon Friendship Surprise", casts doubt into this validity of this claim.

* ''Webcomic/DriveDaveKellet'', despite it's overall Spanish/{{Spanglish}} culture, has the Jinyiwei (see the Real Life section for the group that inspired the name). Many of them are pretty unpleasant people, though in most cases it's more "ruthless" than actually "evil".

* In ''Anime/SamuraiChamploo'', there are couple of characters working for the shogunate's secret police, but they are all good guys. There is hardboiled detective parody, Manzou the Saw, as well as an ActionGirl and her partner who work to bring down a prostitution/crime ring.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' we had the ROOT organization which was a branch of [[EliteMook ANBU]] that answered directly to [[WellIntentionedExtremist Danzo Shimura]] instead of [[BigGood the Hokages]].
* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', we have the Principality of Zeon's Secret Service,[[note]][[ANaziByAnyOtherName Does the acronym sound familiar?]][[/note]] though they only exist in backstory. Their activities throughout Zeon's existence include killing off the Daikun family and their supporters to ensure the Zabis' rule, and disappearing One Year War protesters and suspected traitors (which is pretty much anyone they or the Zabis didn't like) in typical secret police fashion. Two of the side manga even describe how Side 3 suffered from rolling "blackouts", which in reality were whole neighborhoods being cleared out and left unpopulated; in other words, [[NightmareFuel there was nobody left to turn houselights on over entire city blocks]].
** Notably in the novels, Ramba Ral (of all people) was a member of the Secret Service instead of being the badass Gouf pilot we all know him for. As opposed to the OfficerAndAGentleman he was in the TV/Movie series, he was more a Gihren loyalist here, such that he harbored shame over his father saving Zeon Zum Daikun's children from extermination.
* The Oprichnina are an example of this trope in ''{{Literature/Gate}}''. Formed by Zorzal after his father, Emperor Molto, is poisoned, he uses this force to arrest any nobles and senators who are attempting to seek a peaceful resolution with the Japanese government. Despite their horrendous behavior, what they're doing is technically considered the Empire's internal affairs, preventing the Japanese Prime Minister from being able to house any Imperials attempting to seek refuge in their embassy, lest Zorzal uses this as an excuse to restart the war.

* In ''Anime/LycorisRecoil'', the Direct Action assassinates criminals and terrorists to prevent crime and cover up the ones they failed to.

* The ''Fingermen'' in ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' - with the actual surveillance done by agents of the ''Eye'' and ''Ear'', the agents of the ''Finger'' are the ones who do the black-bagging of political targets.

* The Judges of [[ComicBook/JudgeDredd Mega City One]] have the Wally Squad, who have the same powers as a regular judge but are free to blend in with the general citizenry. Since the citizenry of Mega City One consists largely of idiots, this means you get characters like Jack Point, a HardboiledDetective archetype who has to dress like a clown.
* Franchise/{{Tintin}}: The nations of [[{{Ruritania}} Syldavia]] and [[CommieNazis Borduria]] both have their own secret police. Syldavia's secret police are the ZEPO (''Ze-Po'', ''Zekrett Politzs''), and are analogous to the American CIA and British [=MI6=]. Borduria's are the similarly-named ZEP, and are analogous to Nazi Germany's SS and the Soviet Union's NKVD.

[[folder:Fan Fic]]
* According to the [[ConspiracyTheorist narrator]] of ''[[FanFic/EquestriaAHistoryRevealed Equestria: A History Revealed,]]'' Celestia has all sorts of different secret polices.

* ''FanFic/NightsFavoredChild'' has the Imperial Overwatch, led by [[TheDragon the Inquisitor]].
* ''FanFic/FourDeadlySecrets'': The RSS, Vale's "secret happy fun-time people," who you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alleyway.
* In ''Fanfic/SummerCrowns'', the Second Sons are reorganized to serve as this function after the Dragonhunt-led alliance they're part of take over Myr and make it the capital of the newly established Kingdom of Summer.
* In ''Fanfic/TheUnabridgedMemoirsOfDarthPlagueisTheWise'' has the Political Security Service serving this role for the [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Rim Liberation Front]], often carrying out purges in order to eliminate supposed "Republic spies".

* ''Film/WhereHandsTouch'': The Gestapo are the bane of Leyna's existence, constantly harassing and tracking her down, with the ever-present threat of her being sterilized or worse just because she's black.
* In ''Film/VForVendetta'', the Norsefire government has the Finger who serve them this way, with all the so-called "Fingermen" operating in virtual impunity. However, when the revolution happens, citizens turn upon them without mercy, as it's implied most secretly hated them (not surprisingly).

* ''Literature/TheCityAndTheCity'', where the "Breach" spirits away any citizens of the titular cities caught trespassing into the other. Given the two cities occupy the same space, it's more difficult than it seems.

* The alternate history novel ''Literature/ForWantOfANail'' gives us the Constabulary, an organization put together by the United States of Mexico during a time of civil unrest and guerrilla terrorist activity in the hopes of restoring order and stability. And while this works, it ultimately backfires, as the Constabulary's commandant, [[MeaningfulName Benito]] Hermion, with the backing of [[MegaCorp Kramer Associates]], stages a coup and takes control of the country.

* In David Weber's [[Literature/HonorHarrington Honorverse]], the People's Republic of Haven had a number of secret agencies:

* In ''Shadow of Freedom'', one bit character is introduced as the leader of the Mobius Secret Police, an agency whose existence is [[NoSuchAgency literally a state secret]]. Another bit character takes a moment to muse on whether or not the former realizes that in most cases, only a Secret Police's ''actions'' are kept a secret.
* Likewise the Caretaker Service in Yulia Latynina's ''Literature/{{Inhuman}}'', but so much more efficient (also, they can double as special forces).

* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers used his position as [[TheSpymaster Master of Whisperers]] to establish the paramilitary Raven's Teeth, which he led in the suppression of Daemon Blackfyre's rebellion. As Hand of the King, Bloodraven was accused of running the kingdom with spies and spells. [[spoiler:These accusations are more or less true, since he's a powerful greenseer who can [[MindRape enter the mind]] of and control any animal or person, as well as receive visions of the future. Over 100 years later, he's hiding out beyond the Wall, teaching these tricks to Bran]].

* ''Literature/ThatHideousStrength'' has the N.I.C.E. Institutional Police, which act like any other typical secret police. Oddly enough, the NICE also have a female police auxiliary, headed by a woman who loves to abuse female prisoners.
* In UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica-set novel ''Literature/TheFirstRuleOfSurvival'', set in post-UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra SA, white Afrikaner policeman Vaughn de Vries comes to realise the new Internal Security department is as paranoid and repressive as the old BOSS that it replaced. Except this time, the dissaffected and possibly rebellious section of South African society whose actions and thoughts are being monitored are ''white''.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. The Terran Federation had Central Security, who have all the tools of a future dystopia to maintain order -- [[BigBrotherIsWatchingYou ubiquitous surveillance]], GovernmentDrugEnforcement, [[TheMole undercover agents]], {{brainwashing}}, [[FakeMemories memory alteration]], {{Mind Probe}}s, {{Torture Technician}}s, even [[StateSec their own military forces]].
* ''Series/{{SSGB}}'': The Gestapo have set up shop in the building right next to the Metropolitan Police Service.
* ''Series/DasBoot'': The Gestapo, who are in La Rochelle, France, to help enforce the German occupation and hunt down the French Resistance. Hagen Forster is a member and one of the main characters in the series.
* ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'':
** The SS's intelligence branch, the SD (''Siecherheitsdienst'') pops up in multiple episodes, especially in the Neutral Zone, where their agents murder and terrorize people with impunity.
** Season 3 reveals that J. Edgar Hoover has remade the FBI into the ARBI, which adds yet another layer of secret-police oppression to the Reich's American territories.
** The Nazi Gestapo (the TropeNamer) is naturally mentioned to still be around. Season 4 also introduces a female Gestapo agent, Martha Stroud-it's then referred to as the "Staatspolizei" (the second two words of its official title, ''Geheime Staatspolizei''-Secret State Police), and she's assisted by male agents too.

* ''Series/AFrenchVillage'': The SD (the SS's intelligence service) is a menacing presence under Heinrich Müller in Villeneuve, ruthlessly hunting down and torturing resistance members. Conversely, the French RG were already around before investigating Communists, and continue their work into the war as collaborators.
* ''Series/UtopiaFalls'': The Authority, the city's police, detain and interrogate people simply for dancing or singing in unapproved ways, while having spies everywhere.

* The song [[https://youtu.be/_XB3PxNZpT4 Secret Police]], sung by [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Hatsune Miku]], describes this trope to a T, with a bit of ParanoiaFuel to the mix, as is implies that the agents could be absolutely anyone, no matter their age or social status.

* Mentioned in the second verse of Resistance by {{Music/Muse}}
-->Kill your prayers for love and peace\\
You'll wake the thought police\\

* The Inquisition of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', with three major branches, each specializing in fighting either heretics, aliens, or the forces of chaos. Also overlaps with StateSec. How ''secret'' their policing is can vary, considering some Inquisitors have become famous and well-known, but also depending on circumstances or an individual Inquisitor's preferred methods. While Inquisitor Lord Torquemada Coteaz maintains an extensive informant network throughout the Formosa Sector (said to be [[BigBrotherIsWatching at least 2 in every 3 citizens]]), others such as Inquisitor Lord Fyodor Karamazov are more likely to descend on a planet with their own personal fleet and Chamber Militants.
** For more mundane dangers, there's the Adeptus Arbites. The Arbites deal with organised crime, sedition, rebellion, and everything else outside the jurisdiction or ability of the local police forces. Essentially, they are the MVD to the Inquisition's KGB. One source describes them as having [[SinisterSurveillance "crystal lenses and sound wave detectors ... that can watch citizens and listen to their conversations 100 leagues away, Imperial spy satellites watch what they can't see directly"]].
** And most shadowy of all is the Officio Assassinorum. Their forte is stealth and secrecy, and as well as external threats, the Officio Assassinorum often deals with rogue planetary governors. So capable is the Officio Assassinorum that one Grand Master of Assassins, Drakan Vangorich, used the temples to slay the other High Lords of Terra and take over the Imperium himself. It took 400 Space Marines to defeat his army of 100 Eversor Assassins and the battle left one lone Space Marine of the Imperial Fists standing to claim the Grand Master's head. Since this event, deployment of even a single Assassin requires the authorisation of at least two thirds of the High Lords of Terra, and the lasting distrust means the Space Marines have '''conspiracy theories''' about them, suspecting the Officio Assassinorum of responsibility for unexplained misfortunes such as the Crimson Fists' fortress monastery being destroyed by its own defence missile.
* The Gnome nation of [[http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041129a Zilargo]], from the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' campaign setting TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}, all aspects of national security and law enforcement is handled by an order of spies, diviners and assassins known as The Trust. The Gnomes of Zilargo are mostly happy with this arrangement, since their nation has the lowest crime rate on the continent and their national pastime, intrigue, is not generally interfered with.

* [[TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay Kislev]], being a FantasyCounterpartCulture based on Tzarist Russia, has them. [[CrapsackWorld They are]] [[LowFantasy not nice.]]

* In ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'', each major faction in the Inner Sphere has at least one: The Federated Suns have the MIIO, the Draconis Combine the ISF, the Lyran Commonwealth has LOKI, the Free Worlds League has SAFE, the Capellan Confederation has the Maskirovka and [[ImpartialPurposeDrivenFaction ComStar]] has ROM. LOKI and ROM cross the line into outright StateSec, the former having enough military clout to all but take over the Commonwealth in TheCoup during the backstory and ROM being heavily integrated with the [=ComGuard=].
** The Clans, meanwhile, have The Watch, which is more or less run independently by each Clan. As can be expected from ProudWarriorRaceGuys who despise all forms of lies and trickery and had spent 300-odd years living in complete isolation from other humans, their competence leaves a bit to be desired. 'Clan intelligence' more or less starts and ends with 'looking it up on Chatterweb' (the Clan version of social media).
* Internal Security or [=IntSec=] from ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}''
* For a while, [[TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings Hantei XVI]], better known as the Steel Chrysanthemum, instated the Steel Magistrates, which were meant to root out the many (mostly imaginary) conspiracies he thought were arrayed against him. This was seen after the fact as one of the many pieces of evidence that [[TheCaligula he was completely insane]], and [[spoiler: led to the sages [[RetGone striking most of the records of his reign from history.]]]]

* Very practical to have one in ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}} 3''. Stupid rebel bombings.
** In ''Tropico 4'', the secret police are formed by edict of the Ministry of the Interior. You assign it to an existing service building and they monitor dissent on the island, allowing you to discreetly head off subversive activities and assassinate undesired civilians. They are more effective if they are allowed to tap the island's telecommunications.
** In ''Tropico 5'', the secret police cannot be formed until the Cold War. They monitor the island's inhabitants to discover faction leaders and rebels.
* Appears to be a large part of the Turks' job in the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' setting, although it's not their ''official'' job and they combine it with CIA-type external functions. And dress like [[TheMenInBlack Men in Black]]. Another variant of theirs on the archetype is having only ''first'' names and a great variety in appearance and fighting style.
** They pulled at least one of their members out of an orphanage and trained her from childhood. This is not standard Secret Police fare; there's a certain ninja vibe to the whole thing and they apparently take lead in most covert ops, even if [=SOLDIERs=] are assigned as supplementary muscle.
** ''VideoGame/BeforeCrisis'' winds up being largely about being a rebel Turk faction trying to [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight Screw The Rules And Do The Right Thing]]. Interestingly, the ringleader of this little caper, the stoic softy Tseng, is still head Turk during ''[[Anime/FinalFantasyVIIAdventChildren Advent Children]]'', when Shinra has lost most of its control, and is one of Rufus Shinra's personal guards.
** And please everyone note that these are the secret police not of a country, but of a ''power company''. Though said company ''is'' the government.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''

** Speaking of the Thalmor, this is one of their roles in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', mixed with, essentially, ChurchPolice. One of the reasons [[ScrewYouElves everyone hates them so much]] is because they have a nasty habit of dragging off dissenters and making them disappear; a right they gained within Imperial territory from the Empire as part of the White-Gold Concordat to end the [[GreatOffscreenWar Great War]] no less. Their enforcement of the ban on [[DeityOfHumanOrigin Talos]] worship is one of the many motivating factors of the [[LaResistance Stormcloaks]] in the Skyrim {{Civil War}}.
* The Dominion from ''VideoGame/WildStar'' has the Imperial Corps of Intelligence (ICI), run mostly by the Mechari. This has the effect of making them terrifyingly effective and extremely cool.

* In ''VideoGame/TotalWarRomeII'', the Eastern Empires factions share a trait called Secret Police, which grants them extra defense against enemy agents.

* Inspired by the above, ''VideoGame/{{Beholder}}'' has you taking on the role of secret policeman yourself. Although player-character Carl Stein is just a landlord and not a member of any such organisation, he is tasked by the state to spy and report on his tenants by such means as searching apartments and installing cameras in their smoke-detectors without the tenants knowing.
* The Secret Police in ''[[http://www.nrtoone.com/dictator/ Dictaror]]'' is one of the factions to appease.
* The port city of Limsa Lominsa in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has its own heroic version of SecretPolice known as the Rogue's Guild. Formerly the Upright Thieves, the Rouge's Guild works directly under Admiral Merlwyb to uphold the original [[ScoundrelCode Lominsan Code]] from the shadows while the Maelstrom (military) and Yellow Jackets (police) focus on other tasks.
* The Suppression Bureau from ''VideoGame/CultistSimulator'' has inspectors, courts and laws that are themselves secret, and they can punish crimes that were literally only committed in dreams. Convicts are not given visiting rights or even a finite release date. They do still need evidence to arrest or convict, though.
* The Ben-Hassrath are the intelligence agency and secret police of the Qunari in ''Franchise/DragonAge''. In addition to gathering intelligence on other lands, they also enforce political loyalty and philosophical orthodoxy among the qunari population, and are responsible for "[[TwoPlusTortureMakesFive re-educating]]" those who have gone astray. One of the potential companions in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', Iron Bull, is a Ben-Hassrath operative who is surprisingly open about it, and he talks about some of their tactics they use to control the population.

* Plays a role in the central mystery of ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney''. [[spoiler:The Reaper]] is not a serial killer, avenging ghost, supernatural curse, or a macabre string of coincidences, but rather a [[spoiler:small, covert contingent within Scotland Yard organized by Lord Chief Justice Stronghart]] to extrajudicially assassinate big-time criminals that can bribe or threaten their way out of legal consequences and MakeItLookLikeAnAccident.

* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': PlayedForLaughs. One of the old Heterodynes realized that his town needed a police force, but he didn't want to be bothered by actually seeing them going about their work. So he invented a way to make police that [[WeirdnessCensor would be impossible for normal people to notice]], [[LaserGuidedAmnesia and even if told about them, the people would forget in a few minutes]]. They can see each other, of course, as can the [[GeniusLoci Castle]] and the [[SuperSoldier Jaegers]], but no one else ever notices them.
* ''Webcomic/DriveDaveKellet'', despite it's overall Spanish/{{Spanglish}} culture, has the Jinyiwei (see the Real Life section for the group that inspired the name). Many of them are pretty unpleasant people, though in most cases it's more "ruthless" than actually "evil".

* ''Roleplay/OpenBlue'' has two, with [[PuttingOnTheReich Sirene's]]'s Kolpo, and [[TheEmpire Avelia's]] Office of Counter Intelligence, which is basically a Secret Police exclusively for its (bloated) military.

* The ''WebOriginal/ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum'' have the Department of Internal Security, possibly influenced by the Cable Street Particulars, who started out benign but eventually shifted to the Mysterious Somebody's secret police and began a reign of terror until they were thrown out in a CivilWar. Their existence was obviously public knowledge, but their corruption and methods weren't, with even most Guards not seeming to know just how rotten the department had become. The later Department of Internal Operations is a more literal example, as in theory only the DIO itself and the Board of Department Heads know they even exist; their role is to root out Suvian infiltrators of HQ and dispose of them, and anyone who encounters them is promptly [[LaserGuidedAmnesia neuralysed]]. In practise, there are rumours of their existence, but nobody knows for sure; according to one of the DIO's agents, the department's discovery would be disastrous, resulting in the deaths of the DIO's members at best and a full-scale rebellion against the Board of Department Heads at worst.

* Franchise/{{Tintin}}: The nations of [[{{Ruritania}} Syldavia]] and [[CommieNazis Borduria]] both have their own secret police. Syldavia's secret police are the ZEPO (Ze-Po, ''Zekrett Politzs''), and are analogous to the American CIA and British [=MI6=]. Borduria's are the similarly-named ZEP, and are analogous to Nazi Germany's SS and the Soviet Union's NKVD.

[[folder:Real Life]]

!!Russia
For a variety of reasons, UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} is the historical king (or tsar, if you will) of secret police. Russia has had some kind of secret police-like agency for most of its history:
* The first--dating from the ''16th century''--was UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible's Oprichnina. They were almost like a monastic order, where the Oprichniki were the "monks" and Ivan was their "abbot". The Oprichniks had free rein to terrorize the Russian population, and not even the nobility were spared. One of the scariest things about them was the banners they flew during their raids--severed dog heads mounted on spears.
* The Oprichnina was dissolved before the end of Ivan the Terrible's reign, but the [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia Russian Crown]] always had informal networks of domestic spies to keep an eye and a lid on dissent. In 1826, Emperor Nicholas I systematized and expanded these networks under the "Third Section of His Majesty's Own Chancellery." The Third Section was a great boogeyman in Russia for the middle part of the 19th century, as for all the spying of earlier regimes, the Third Section's ability to catch you talking politics one day and send you to Siberia the next was spooky and new. However, by the 1870s it was undone by its own shortcomings--mostly that it was an OddlySmallOrganization (it never had more than 40 fulltime agents and a few hundred gendarmes at its disposal) and developed some bad habits (in particular, it never realized that it needed to spy on anyone other than nobles and bureaucrats). This led it to be replaced in 1881 by...
* The ''Okhrannoye otdeleniye'' (Security Section), better known in the West as the ''Okhrana'' (technically, it was usually called Okhran'''k'''a, at least in Russia--an [[IronicNickname ironic]] [[FluffytheTerrible "cutesy" diminutive for a terrifying organization]]). Much larger than the Third Section, and better organized, most late-19th and early-20th-century secret police organizations across Europe took notes from the Okhrana's playbook.
* The Okhrana was (understandably) abolished after the [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions February Revolution]] of 1917. However, the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Bolsheviks]] established a new security agency, the Cheka, less than a month after taking over. The Cheka was even bigger and more efficent than the Okhrana, and its exploits--particularly those of its leader, Felix Dzerzhinski--were legendary (and [[TheDreaded legendarily frightening]]). Due to ongoing shakeups in the structure of the Russian and then Soviet government, the Cheka was reorganized and renamed several times between the Revolution and the death of UsefulNotes/JosephStalin. Its most famous incarnation during this period is probably as the General Directorate of State Security (Glavnoye Upravleniye Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, GUGB) under the umbrella of People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (''Narodniy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del'', NKVD), which existed 1936-41. It was during this period that the secret police agencies first got involved in foreign intelligence, as well.
* After Stalin's death, there was a power struggle over who would control the secret police and how it would be managed. In 1954, Khruschchev's faction won out and established the ''Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti'' (Committee for State Security), more commonly known as the [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre KGB]]. The KGB was by this point the premier Soviet foreign intelligence agency in addition to being the secret police domestically, which led to some weirdness.
* UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia inherited the Soviet security apparatus. While it underwent several reorganizations, around early 2000s it mostly came to the shape reminiscent of the old days.
** After the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB's foreign and domestic functions were split between the Foreign Intelligence Service (''Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki'', SVR) and the Federal Security Service (''Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti'', FSB). While the FSB was originally envisioned as the kind of domestic counterintelligence-cum-law-enforcement agency that exists in Western democracies (e.g. the FBI), it never really gave up its old ways and is now pretty much UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin's KGB (or, if you like, his Okhrana). Some intelligence world wags have commented about the FSB, "[[NewLookSameGreatTaste New name, same friendly service!]]"
** The secret police a modern Russian citizen is the most likely to run afoul of is the MVD E-Department, or the Center for Counteracting Extremism, or Center E (there is no established translation). This political police handles most of the low-profile dissidents and Internet badmouthers, while the FSB only works with high profile cases.

!!Europe (except Russia, pre-20th century)
* Some scholars have suggested that the Spartan Crypteia played this role: they were ordered to spy on the helot (slave) population, and were given permission to kill anyone who were suspected of conspiring to overthrow the government.
* UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire had the ''Frumentarii'' (lit. 'foragers') who were spies tasked with infiltration of foreign groups and collecting information about the situation in various regions. Together with ''Speculatores'' (the military scouts) they were also conducting arrests, interrogation and elimination of the most dangerous traitors, dissenters and troublemakers.
* The Council of Ten in UsefulNotes/{{Venice}} during the days when Venice was a sovereign state. It had a fearsome reputation, (which it probably didn't mind) but according to at least one writer it focused mostly on those who were actually powerful enough to pose a threat. Thus it was a more downplayed version.
* Until it became defunct, UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition was basically this for the Spanish crown. Quite possibly the UrExample... Which explains why [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus no one expected it.]] Unlike the Inquisition in most other countries, the Spanish Inquisition was unique in that the Spanish crown had usurped the Church's authority in Spanish territory to collect tithes, appoint bishops, and prosecute Church-related crimes (at its height, the Spanish Empire was ''that'' powerful). The Inquisition in Spain became the political police as much as (if not more than) ecclesiastical police. By contrast, the Inquisition in most other Catholic countries was separate from (and usually more fair and consistent than) the secular legal authorities of the time.
* All over the place in Napoleonic France, one of the most ruthlessly efficient police states of the period (especially towards the end). In addition to the "regular" force under the Minister of Police (Fouché, later replaced by Savary, although Fouché retained a vast and powerful network of informants and assorted thugs), there was the ''gendarmerie'' (a section of the army), Davout's military police (''another'' section of the army), the Palace's police under General Duroc[[note]]That one was especially scary because it effectively applied martial law to anyone who fell under its jurisdiction... even though most of these people were civilians[[/note]]... mutual suspicion was rampant and even encouraged between all of these.
* The Austrian Empire and then Austria-Hungary had one that (fascinatingly) went from hypercompetent and scary to incompetent and woefully underfunded. They went from being able to intercept and copy almost all correspondence into and out of Vienna during the Congress of Vienna (1814) to a service so badly overstretched that a staff of 20 people was expected to monitor all postal traffic in the nation post-Metternich, including clerical assistants and servants. Despite this, it was still treated as some monolithic instrument of repression and censorship, generally by people not actually within the nation. Its history is interesting, in that Metternich was insistent on keeping it funded and capable, while his rival, the Finance Minister Kolowrat, argued that the organization (1) was too expensive for the Empire's limited budget and (2) wasn't even particularly effective at preventing the spread of subversive ideas. The later ineffectiveness of the Austrian/Austro-Hungarian secret police was basically because Kolowrat was right--Metternich's secret police was unable to prevent the UsefulNotes/RevolutionsOf1848 from breaking out across the Empire, and even though the Habsburgs were able to reassert central control, they decided that investing in police-state repression wasn't worth the expense (especially with other tools at their disposal).
* While there is no real consensus on what body did what, the UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany and the Manchu Qing Dynasty of ImperialChina all had some form of this. In the case of Germany, each constituent state maintained its own service, the most notable of which was the ''Preußische Geheimpolizei'' (Prussian Secret Police) established by Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey following the 1848 revolution -- which would later become the basis for Gestapo.

!!Europe (except Russia, 20th century)
* For sheer notoriety, nothing tops the ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' (Secret State Police Service), much better known as UsefulNotes/TheGestapo, from UsefulNotes/NaziGermany. Prior to them was the TropeNamer in the Prussian Secret Police. Most other similar organizations did not use the word "secret" in their names or descriptions. There was even a junior Gestapo, called the ''Hitlerjugend Streifendienst'' (Hitler Youth Patrol Force), middle-school kids who spied on and reported other kids for setting up unlawful youth organizations... or their parents for opposing the regime.
** For all its infamy, the actual efficiency of Gestapo depended significantly on other security organizations in the area -- most notably the [=SD=] headed by UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich -- due to being constantly underfunded and understaffed. After their takeover, top-ranking Nazi officials continuously worked to undermine the Gestapo in favor of the Nazi Party-aligned [=SD=], due to mistrust of the previous agency that harassed the Nazis among others before, and a desire to keep internal security in the hands of a home-grown entity.
* The East German ''Ministerium für Staatssicherheit'' (Ministry for State Security), known as ''UsefulNotes/TheStasi'', were far worse than the Gestapo. While they were privately mocked for their use of {{Incredibly Obvious Bug}}s, they were also feared for their ability to get people to rat out their friends and neighbors. Estimates of the prevalence of informers range from 1 in 50 to ''1 in 7'', essentially turning UsefulNotes/EastGermany into a PoliceState. The Stasi was also infamous for {{gaslighting}} political undesirables by messing up their private lives so they'll have a mental breakdown and have no stomach to challenge the government. The biggest advantage of ''Zersetzung'' was that its subtle nature enabled PlausibleDeniability.
* Most other [[UsefulNotes/WarsawPact Eastern European communist regimes]] had their notorious units: the Czechoslovak ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StB StB]]'', the Romanian ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate Securitate]]'', the Hungarian ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Protection_Authority ÁVH]]''... (although none of them took [[BigBrotherIsWatching mass surveillance]] to quite the same extremes as the Stasi).
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVRA O.V.R.A.]] of UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, who are the subject of ''Literature/TheConformist'' and who harass the title character in ''Anime/PorcoRosso''. Secret enough nobody's sure what O.V.R.A. meant (there are various possible meanings) or even if it actually existed (there are rumours that Mussolini invented it to scare political enemies and distract everyone from who actually did the job, namely the MVSN (the original {{Black Shirt}}s) and the Public Safety Agents Corps (the normal police).
* Great Britain:
** A secret cell within London's Metropolitan Police Special Branch - the Special Demonstration Squad. From 1968 to 2008, these elite policemen would go on deep-cover 'tours' in political activist groups; mainly to provide information to the regular police ahead of any protest or illegal activity, but also to smear and discredit them. A tactic they found useful was to get into a relationship with a high-ranking member of a group - the end of a tour saw the operative vanish from the group and the person's life, which had a side-effect akin to the Stasi's 'Zersetzung', especially when one officer left his partner in the group with a baby.
** The British Army's 14 Intelligence Company a.k.a 'the Det', a secretive special forces unit tasked with covert surveillance in Northern Ireland with gadget-strewn 'Q cars'. Along with their parent regiment, the Special Air Service, they faced accusations of torture and brutality up to and including murder levelled by Irish republican groups. Bear in mind that the IRA are not necessarily the most impartial source when it comes to the British Army. It isn't impossible, however.

!!Europe (except Russia, present)
* In UsefulNotes/{{Belarus}}, the KGB remains, under the same name. Given that Belarus sadly is still a Soviet-esque dictatorship, this likely is not surprising.

!!Middle East
* Iraq:
** Iraqi Secret police, which was notoriously known for torturing and silencing Shias and Kurds who opposed the Iraqi government. This worsened by the Saddam Era, where hundreds of Iraqis ranging from teenagers to the elderly were sent off to be killed. Secret Police would perform extreme methods of torture, from rape to the gouging of eyes to extract evidence. They would even wiretap homes and then send off anyone in the night if they were suspected of anything slightly off place.
** The Republican Guard was also notorious in silencing dissent, though not a secret police and more of an actual military orginization, their atrocities are associated with actual military operations performed during the late 80s.
* Iran:
** The Basij, a plainclothes militia, is controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who sometimes act as a political secret police. Consisting mostly of male volunteers, the Basij are known for their fanatical devotion to the Ayatollah of Iran. Although it's a semi-decentralized force with many local bands, they have armed battalions controlled directly by the [[StateSec Revolutionary Guards]]. For most volunteers, their job is to enforce Islamic laws on the population, like making sure the women in the streets wear head scarves. And they have long been criticized by human rights organizations-the most recent controversy was during the "Twitter Revolution" in 2009. The Basij broke up mass protests by shooting into the crowds, killing at least a hundred. During their nighttime raids on universities, they broke into dorms and beat up the students, and several female protesters were taken into custody and gang-raped. The most disturbing part is that the Basij have adolescent members, called ''Puyandegan''. Apparently, the Basij went so crazy on the protesters that ''the Ayatollah himself'' had to step in and curb them.
** The SAVAMA is another secret police under the Islamic Republic. After the Shah was overthrown in 1979, the Islamic government inherited the intelligence apparatus of the old SAVAK (Which was also pretty bad), the secret police during the previous regime.
** SAVAK, being the original originization under Imperial Iran, was on the same level due to imprisoning and torturing anyone from religious clerics to human rights activists. It never got as bad as the revolutionary period, but was notorious and despised throughout the country.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabahith Mabahith]] in UsefulNotes/SaudiArabia.
* UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}'s State Security Investigations Service proved to be remarkably like the Stasi after revolution revealed its piles and piles of documents, indicating (according to some sources) that as much as 1 or 2 percent of the country's population of 80 million was on its payroll (mostly as informants). It also proved to have had a taste for ElectricTorture, although that was well-known beforehand (1975's ''The Karnak Cafe'', one of the greatest Egyptian films ever, depicts torture under the 1953-1970 regime of UsefulNotes/GamalAbdelNasser in graphic detail).

!!Eastern and South-Eastern Asia
* The Joseon Dynasty's Amhaeng-eosa (Secret Censors), specially appointed by the King to keep tabs on his own administration and yangban nobility, but never as fully institutionalized as some others on this list. Oddly, or perhaps not when one considers their preferred targets, they also tend to be viewed positively today as agents opposed to government corruption.
* The Ming Dynasty's ''Jinyi Wei'' ("Brocade-Clad Guard") and the ''Dongchang'' ("The Eastern Commission of Investigations"). This is the first incarnation for the modern concept of "secret police". The Ming Dynasty Jinyi Wei originally begin as [[PraetorianGuard bodyguards to the emperor]], but later evolved to a full-blown intelligence agency. They blended into the public and were responsible for thought-policing, domestic-espionage, political assassination, and during times of war, acted as political commissars. The Jinyi Wei were often judge, jury and executioners without any concerns for due-process.
* UsefulNotes/TheShinsengumi, pro-Shogunate and their pro-Meiji rivals/counterparts, the Ishin-Shishi. Most of the Ishin-shishi later became advisers to the emperor.
* [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan Prewar Japan]] had two of these forces; one for overseas territories, and one for the Japanese mainland.
** The former was known as ''Kempeitai'' (憲兵隊), or "military police corps", and was the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun IJA's]] military police. It also doubled as a Gestapo-esque secret police for conquered Japanese territories during the 1930s and 1940s, up until the end of World War II.
** The latter, lesser-known Japanese secret police was the ''Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu'' (特別高等警察), or "special higher police". In modern times it's often referred to as ''Tokko'' (特高) for short. Tokko carried out similar acts of repression that the Kempeitai did, but was a purely domestic force. Tokko inspired the term "thought police" ('shisou keisatsu', 思想警察), but during its time, it was often referred to as 'chian keisatsu' (治安警察)--the [[NonIndicativeName Peace Police.]][[note]]Definitely not to be confused with the "Piece Police" from Series/ThePuzzlePlace.[[/note]] IJN admiral Takeo Takagi, who commanded the Imperial fleet during the 1941 invasion of the Phillippines, said about Tokko: 泣く子も黙ると言われた恐怖の「特高」。[[note]]If you say "Tokko", even a crying child falls silent.[[/note]]
** Due to the brutality of prewar Japan's secret police, modern-day Japanese intelligence and security services[[note]]Mostly carried out the Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA, 公安調査庁) which is under the Ministry of Justice, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Public Security Bureau (警視庁公安部)[[/note]] have far more limited powers of surveillance compared to even their modern western counterparts (in the case of PSIA, the efforts to keep it in check [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement arguably]] [[GoneHorriblyRight went so far]] that [[PoliceAreUseless it is seen by some as the most redundant security organization of the present day]]).
* [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious Modern-day China]] has several secret police units, as one would expect from a country that has managed to keep over 1 billion people in line, even more than 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Most of them are organs within the dreaded Ministry of State Security (国家安全部) and the Chinese Communist Party, but the Ministry of Public Security (公安部), responsible for day-to-day law enforcement in China, also contains secret police units. These include the Enemy Investigations Bureau (敵偵局), and Office 610 (610弁公室). The latter is tasked with [[UnPerson disappearing Falun Gong activists]] (and, allegedly, [[OrganTheft harvesting their organs]]).
* Taiwan boasted two oddly-named versions, which operated at the same time: (1) the General Department of Political Warfare, which maintained both political officers and general high-ranking commanders in every military unit, down to the company or battery level, as well as in many police units -- and (2) the Taiwan Garrison Command, commanded by a three-star general, which acted to suppress political activism and ensure political orthodoxy, and was tied to various unsavory political murders or assassinations, and kept a hand in influencing society, economics, culture and education. These were the descendants of secret police organizations in pre-1949 China, in which the present Taiwan has institutional continuity with-the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, and the Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics. It also showed some influence from the Russian system of political commissars.
* Pakistan has the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), which notably helped train the Afghan Mujahiddin during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and later the Taliban following Soviet withdrawal. They also have proported connections with Islamic militant groups and helped anti-Indian insurgents in Kashmir. Following the UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, many US intelligence officals began to preceive that the ISI is an unoffical terrorist organization akin to Al-Qaeda, while India accused them of helping the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
* The National Intelligence and Security Authority was the Philippines' most notorious intelligence agency responsible for cracking down on anti-Marcos opposition in the 1970s and 80s under the command of General Fabian Ver. Formerly replacing the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, the [=NISA=] was rebranded to its current name after the [=EDSA=] Revolution.
* UsefulNotes/NorthKorea's version of the [=KGB=] was called the State Security Department, widely considered to be one of the most repressive police forces in the world, as it's been noted to have been involved in countless human rights abuses, including forced disappearances and public executions. And unsurprisingly, North Korea is a totalitarian PoliceState, where the government controls ''every'' aspect of its citizens' private lives, including the clothing they can wear and the TV shows they can watch, making it the perfect example of an [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Orwellian]] {{Dystopia}}. Dissenters and their immediate family members are sent to concentration camps, where they are subject to harsh and brutal Gulag-type conditions, including slavery and torture.
* For its part, UsefulNotes/SouthKorea had the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) that oversaw intelligence activities, investigations, and occasional kidnappings at home and abroad, and wielded nearly absolute power in the country, to the point where in 1979 the KCIA director assassinated then-president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee. Several decades and two major reorganizations later, the organization is still functioning as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Service_(South_Korea) National Intelligence Service]] -- though its powers were obviously cut back in the years of democratization.
* It is said that the UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}}an intelligence services (the Internal Security Department and the Security and Intelligence Division) work much like this.


!!Africa
* In UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra, the South African [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Bureau_of_State_Security Bureau for State Security]] [[note]]incorrectly given the abbreviation [[FunWithAcronyms B.O.S.S.]] by journalists; the official Afrikaans was ''die Buro vir Staatsveiligheid''[[/note]] fulfilled this function for the white government. BOSS was notorious for its general paranoia, for enthusiastically interrogating black suspects and facilitating their "suicides" from very high windows, and invented the euphemism "care package" for letter bombs -- on the grounds that receiving one of these ''really'' takes care of people. This was replaced in 1980 by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Service_%28South_Africa%29 National Intelligence Service (NIS)]], and following the end of apartheid, a revised and re-educated version persists as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Agency National Intelligence Agency (NIA)]].
* The hideously inappropriately named "State Research Bureau" of UsefulNotes/IdiAmin's Uganda.

!!Americas
* The Chilean DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) under the rule of UsefulNotes/AugustoPinochet. Actually, all of the various organizations of this type during Operation Condor would qualify, but the DINA is perhaps the most infamous.
* Nicaragua during the Sandinista period (1979-1990) had the DGSE, the General Directorate for State Security, which was modeled after the East German Stasi.
* UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} during the Duvalier dictatorship had the ''Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale''/''Volontè pou Sekirite Nasyonal'' (VSN, "National Security Volunteers"), a rather terrifying organization that specialized in murdering and disappearing opponents of the regime. Their adeptness at disappearances lent them their nickname, the ''Tonton Macoute''--literally "Uncle Gunnysack", the Haitian/[[UsefulNotes/{{Voudoun}} Vodou]] version of TheKrampus. Many ''Tonton Macoute'' officers were fully-fledged Vodou leaders, and fully exploited the popular impression they had supernatural powers to terrorize the public.
* During UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}}'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War_(Mexico) Dirty War]], which lasted roughly from the 1960s until the early 1980s, there were many versions:
** The [[http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liga_Comunista_23_de_Septiembre#La_Brigada_Blanca Brigadas Blancas]] (White Brigades) were a combination of Mexico City police, Federal District police, and Mexican soldiers with the aim to dismantle the September 23 Communist League, a Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group that opposed the Priista government. While they had been active in several Northern and Central Mexico states since the early 1970s, it wasn't until 1976 when then-President Luis Echeverría would sign his approval for operations in Mexico City. Every agent working for the Brigada Blanca received a monthly wage of 3,000 pesos and "as much as needed" for general expenses (not bad for 1970s Mexico).
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_massacre Los Halcones]]: Prior to the White Brigades, Los Halcones was a paramilitary group created to sabotage popular movements, repress demonstrations and prevent big movements from arising. Also, the general public was told they were going to be "to ensure security in the (then-recently inaugurated) Metro".
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre The Olympia Battalion]]: A mixture of many security forces (presidential guards, mayor presidential state officers, policemen and soldiers) intended to bring security for the Olympic games. They were identified by a white glove or handkerchief in their left hands. Since the Student Movement of 1968 was deemed subversive and a threat to national security and could damage Mexico's view in the upcoming Olympic Games, the security forces were turned into a shock group and repressed, beat, tortured and killed/disappeared many of the movement's sympathisers (including Ana María Regina Teuscher Krueger, who was going to be an aide-de-camp for the Olympic Ceremony).
** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direcci%C3%B3n_Federal_de_Seguridad Dirección Federal de Seguridad]] (Federal Security Direction) was a Mexican intelligence agency created in the late 1940s. It was infamously corrupt and tortured many people they considered "criminals"; they even assassinated a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Buend%C3%ADa journalist]] for reporting on their ties with the DEA, CIA, and high-ranking corrupt officials.
* From 1950-1983 the Canadian government operated a secret program called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROFUNC PROFUNC]] which spied on suspected Communists and Communist-sympathizers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police developed dossiers on 16,000 Communist party members/supporters and over 50,000 suspected sympathizers including details on their families, exact movements, and including pre-filled arrest documents. In the event of war with the Soviet Union (the so-called Mobilization Day), the RCMP would immediately round up everyone on the PROFUNC list and send them to [[POWCamp internment camps]].
* Even in the mostly democratic United States, a few agencies have at least approached this status:
** During the [[UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement Civil Rights Era]], after the ''Brown v. Board'' ruling banning school segregation, several DeepSouth states set up agencies to fight "racial agitators;" Mississippi, with its Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, is the most known example. Its mission was to "protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states" from "encroachment thereon by the Federal Government" (read: prevent integration and the demise of Jim Crow) and, to do this, they had an extensive network of spies and informants. Both White and Black, in fact. Although murder was discussed by some agents but never actualized, methods such as assaults, blacklisting and intimidation were used against "racial agitators" and their allies; for example, Clyde Kennard was railroaded to Parchman after attempting to integrate the White-only Ole Miss. They also broadcasted pro-segregation propaganda. Founded on 1957, they lasted until 1973, by which time they had shifted their focus to target anti-UsefulNotes/VietnamWar [[RedScare "subversives"]].
** Historically, the FBI were very close to becoming a straight example under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, focusing on the suppression of political dissent at the expense of a worsening organised crime problem and amassing large files of potential blackmail material on radicals... and elected officials, according to some sources.
** The Department of Homeland Security as a whole is often accused of this ever since its founding in 2002 following 9/11. Issues included data mining, using fusion centers to infringe on civil liberties, wrongful deportations and arrests, sexual abuse of women and separation of families at the border, and kidnapping citizens in Portland during the George Floyd protests. As a result, critics describe them as this and acting as the [[StateSec National Police]].

[[/folder]]

* ''Literature/DraconisMemoria'': The Cadre, the elite intelligence agency of the Corvantine Empire, are very much this, executing traitors, suspected traitors and anyone associated with either with equal amounts of callousness and zeal. They are the main opponents of the Syndicate’s Exceptional Initiatives and employ almost as many Blood-blessed as the former, though their approach tends to be considerably more blunt and violent. When in uniform, their members even don the stereotypical [[ConspicuousTrenchcoat "dark coat and fedora"]] outfit for bonus intimidation factor.

* In, ''Anime/LycorisRecoil'' the Direct Action assassinates criminals and terrorists to prevent crime and cover up the ones they failed to.

* The main antagonists in Creator/EricFrankRussell's novel ''Literature/{{Wasp}}''. The Kaimina Tempiti, or Kaitempi, serve this role for the [[PuttingOnTheReich Nazi-like]] Sirian Empire. The name is an obvious allusion to the Japanese Kempeitai during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. In the novel, the Kaitempi censor all media and use violence and intimidation to quell any opposition to the Imperial government. The protagonist, James Mowry, is sent to a remote Sirian colony in order to foment rebellion and sow chaos as preparation for the Terran invasion. To this effect, he creates (and [[RefugeInAudacity officially registers]]) an anti-government (read: [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters terrorist]]) organization called Dirac Angestun Gesept (Sirian Freedom Party). He also proceeds to hire contract killers to take out Kaitampi officials.

!!Europe (Pre-20th century)

!!Europe (20th century)

!!Europe (Present)

* UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} during the Duvalier dictatorship had the ''Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale''/''Volontè pou Sekirite Nasyonal'' (VSN, "National Security Volunteers"), a rather terrifying organization that specialized in murdering and disappearing opponents of the regime. Their adeptness at disappearances lent them their nickname, the ''Tonton Macoute''--literally "Uncle Gunnysack", the Haitian/[[UsefulNotes/Voudoun Vodou]] version of TheKrampus. Many ''Tonton Macoute'' officers were fully-fledged Vodou leaders, and fully exploited the popular impression they had supernatural powers to terrorize the public.

* UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} has had some kind of secret police-like agency for most of its history:
** The first--dating from the ''16th century''--was UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible's Oprichnina. They were almost like a monastic order, where the Oprichniki were the "monks" and Ivan was their "abbot". The Oprichniks had free rein to terrorize the Russian population, and not even the nobility were spared. One of the scariest things about them was the banners they flew during their raids--severed dog heads mounted on spears.
** The Oprichnina was dissolved before the end of Ivan the Terrible's reign, but the [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia Russian Crown]] always had informal networks of domestic spies to keep an eye and a lid on dissent. In 1826, Emperor Nicholas I systematized and expanded these networks under the "Third Section of His Majesty's Own Chancellery." The Third Section was a great boogeyman in Russia for the middle part of the 19th century, as for all the spying of earlier regimes, the Third Section's ability to catch you talking politics one day and send you to Siberia the next was spooky and new. However, by the 1870s it was undone by its own shortcomings--mostly that it was an OddlySmallOrganization (it never had more than 40 fulltime agents and a few hundred gendarmes at its disposal) and developed some bad habits (in particular, it never realized that it needed to spy on anyone other than nobles and bureaucrats). This led it to be replaced in 1881 by...
** The ''Okhrannoye otdeleniye'' (Security Section), better known in the West as the ''Okhrana'' (technically, it was usually called Okhran'''k'''a, at least in Russia--an [[IronicNickname ironic]] [[FluffytheTerrible "cutesy" diminutive for a terrifying organization]]). Much larger than the Third Section, and better organized, most late-19th and early-20th-century secret police organizations across Europe took notes from the Okhrana's playbook.
** The Okhrana was (understandably) abolished after the [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions February Revolution]] of 1917. However, the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Bolsheviks]] established a new security agency, the Cheka, less than a month after taking over. The Cheka was even bigger and more efficent than the Okhrana, and its exploits--particularly those of its leader, Felix Dzerzhinski--were legendary (and [[TheDreaded legendarily frightening]]). Due to ongoing shakeups in the structure of the Russian and then Soviet government, the Cheka was reorganized and renamed several times between the Revolution and the death of UsefulNotes/JosephStalin. Its most famous incarnation during this period is probably as the General Directorate of State Security (Glavnoye Upravleniye Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, GUGB) under the umbrella of People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (''Narodniy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del'', NKVD), which existed 1936-41. It was during this period that the secret police agencies first got involved in foreign intelligence, as well.
** After Stalin's death, there was a power struggle over who would control the secret police and how it would be managed. In 1954, Khruschchev's faction won out and established the ''Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti'' (Committee for State Security), more commonly known as the [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre KGB]]. The KGB was by this point the premier Soviet foreign intelligence agency in addition to being the secret police domestically, which led to some weirdness.

* UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia inherited the Soviet security apparatus. While it underwent several reorganizations, around early 2000s it mostly came to the shape reminiscent of the old days.
** After the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB's foreign and domestic functions were split between the Foreign Intelligence Service (''Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki'', SVR) and the Federal Security Service (''Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti'', FSB). While the FSB was originally envisioned as the kind of domestic counterintelligence-cum-law-enforcement agency that exists in Western democracies (e.g. the FBI), it never really gave up its old ways and is now pretty much UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin's KGB (or, if you like, his Okhrana). Some intelligence world wags have commented about the FSB, "[[NewLookSameGreatTaste New name, same friendly service!]]"
** The secret police a modern Russian citizen is the most likely to run afoul of is the MVD E-Department, or the Center for Counteracting Extremism, or Center E (there is no established translation). This political police handles most of the low-profile dissidents and Internet badmouthers, while the FSB only works with high profile cases.

* In ''Manga/SpyXFamily'', Yuri Briar is secretly an interrogator for the Ostanian government, and one of his goals is to capture <Twilight>, the rival nation of Westalis's greatest spy. HilarityEnsues because <Twilight> is currently posing as his sister Yor's husband, Loid Forger.

* [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious Modern-day China]] has several secret police units, as one would expect from a country that has managed to keep over 1 billion people in line, even more than 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Most of them are organs within the dreaded Ministry of State Security (国家安全部) and the Chinese Communist Party, but the Ministry of Public Security (公安部), responsible for day-to-day law enforcement in China, also contains secret police units. These include the Enemy Investigations Bureau (敵偵局), and Office 610 (610弁公室). The latter is tasked with [[UnPerson disappearing Falun Gong activists]] (and, allegedly, [[OrganTheft harvesting their organs]]).

* [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious Modern-day China]] has several secret police units, as one would expect from a country that has managed to keep over 1 billion people in line, even more than 25 years after the [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp fall of the Iron Curtain.]] Most of them are organs within the dreaded Ministry of State Security (国家安全部) and the Chinese Communist Party, but the Ministry of Public Security (公安部), responsible for day-to-day law enforcement in China, also contains secret police units. These include the Enemy Investigations Bureau (敵偵局), and Office 610 (610弁公室). The latter is tasked with [[UnPerson disappearing Falun Gong activists]] (and, allegedly, [[OrganTheft harvesting their organs]]).

** The ''Okhrannoye otdeleniye'' (Security Section), better known in the West as the ''Okhrana'' (technically, it was usually called Okhran'''k'''a, at least in Russia--an [[IronicNickname ironic]] "cutesy" diminutive for a terrifying organization). Much larger than the Third Section, and better organized, most late-19th and early-20th-century secret police organizations across Europe took notes from the Okhrana's playbook.

** The Galactic Alliance Guard in the Legacy of the Force books, initially the Galactic Alliance's response to Corellian secessionist movements, quickly develops into this trope.

* The East German ''Ministerium für Staatssicherheit'' (Ministry for State Security), known as ''UsefulNotes/TheStasi'', took the observation of the East German population to massive levels, much worse than the Gestapo. While they were privately mocked for their use of {{Incredibly Obvious Bug}}s, they were also feared for their ability to get people to snitch on their friends and neighbors. Estimates of the prevalence of informers range from 1 in 50 to ''1 in 7'', essentially turning UsefulNotes/EastGermany into a PoliceState. They were also known for {{gaslighting}} dissenting politicians and political undesirables by disrupting their private lives, with the idea that this'll eventually cause them to have a mental breakdown and have no stomach to challenge the government. The biggest advantage that this method, known as ''Zersetzung'', gave was that its subtle nature meant that it was able to be [[PlausibleDeniability plausibly denied]].

* In a semi-Real Life example the movie ''Film/TheBankJob'' features MI5 acting in a role similar to this when they blackmail a group of thieves to commit a bank robbery to [[{{Irony}} steal blackmail materials]] against the royal family. Though the incident in the film has been alleged to be true, it is entirely unproven.

* For its part, UsefulNotes/SouthKorea had the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) that oversaw intelligence activities, investigations, and occasional kidnappings at home and abroad, and wielded nearly absolute power in the country, to the point where in 1979 the KCIA director assassinated then-president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee. Several decades and two major reorganizations later, the organization is still functioning as the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Service_(South_Korea) National Intelligence Service] -- though its powers were obviously cut back in the years of democratization.

* [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious Modern-day China]] has several secret police units, as one would expect from a country that has managed to keep over 1 billion people in line, even more than 25 years after the [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp fall of the Iron Curtain.]] Most of them are organs within the dreaded Ministry of State Security (国家安全部) and the Chinese Communist Party, but the Ministry of Public Security (公安部), responsible for day-to-day law enforcement in China, also contains secret police units. These include the Enemy Investigations Bureau (敵偵局), and Office 610 (610弁公室). The latter is tasked with [[UnPerson disappearing Falun Gong activists]] (and, allegedly[[OrganTheft harvesting their organs]]).