To reply to myself, the thing that I took away from his telling of this experience and watching his wife almost cry when they got to the part about boarding the plane back with the children... it's this:

Every thing that you ever do is recorded somewhere. Every person has a file whether they think they do or not. This file will only ever be used against you.

And Europe remembers such a thing... it was only 1990 that the Stasi was dissolved. Yet here we are constructing an even more powerful and permanent version of "a file on everyone".

My brother's demonstration was a worker's one, not political. But don't you see that if attending a political rally risks arrest and permanent repercussions, even if you were innocent of everything save for having an opinion... then are we not already at the point in which to hold an alternate political view is to risk inserting something into your file (it exists anyway) which could permanently affect your life.

Who knows what the future holds, but for my brother it's unlikely to involve working for a company that ever expects travel to the USA. Thus, one is forced to modify their behaviour to avoid being penalised by the current system.

Isn't that what the effect of the Stasi was?

I mean, being European, I find it hard to see how history isn't repeating itself on an ever grander scale now that there are tools that allow it to do so.