To me, the difference between East German citizen-reports (or 1960's Chinese, or 1970's Cambodian, or . . . ) is whether they are trying to compel people to be Godly or un-Godly. Under these evil government systems, people were reporting people for committing MORAL acts. It was the same as Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego with Nebuchadnezzar - they failed to worship the state, so were sent to prison or killed for it after being reported by their neighbors.
I LIKE a neighborhood watch when it prevents home break ins, murders & terr*rism.
(My Mom was pretty good to call pesky stalkers in to the cops. One day she actually blew the cover of the FBI - who were doing a stake-out of our drug-kingpin neighbors!
)It's true that no method can prevent 100% of crime. That's true for any method of crime prevention (including steps to prevent robbery, murder, etc), but I'm still in favor of crime prevention to get that 90% of attempts that *are* stopped that way.
There is a point at which the trade off in lost freedoms is not worth the value of the prevention. For instance, I disfavor driving security checkpoints for ID's - even tho these would stop a certain number of criminals of all stripes.
But, perhaps because I'm not very artistic
, the value of photography does not (for me) outweigh the value of chasing stalkers away from refineries.