Why do our browsers even allow that?

What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?

4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.

Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.

Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?

Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.

You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.

It's bad guys all the way down.

My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.

Do you mean unfounded?

There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?