Do you think if the Stasi, or someone like them, ever come into power, they'll just ignore all this extra surveillance we've built for free?

Not really a hypothetical - look at China and Russia, or Saudi Arabia [1]. I'll let others make the case to add the US and European countries to that list - not because I don't believe they belong on the list, but just because I'm too lazy to meet the higher bar of evidence that goes with going against groupthink.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_infiltration_of_Twitter#...