How would the Roman Empire have viewed a group like the KGB?

Now, when I say view, I mean both how they would have seen them as well as what they would have done in response to them. The KGB was an intelligence service like nothing the Romans would have ever known. The KGB was perhaps the most elaborate organization of its kind in history, and the Romans had something similar in the form of the frumentarii. The frumentarii, however, were a very different entity from the KGB. While the frumentarii were tasked with intelligence gathering, their primary objective was not intelligence gathering, but tax collection. They were also tasked with knowledge and news distribution for the Emperor. They were divided into regional units like the KGB, but were mostly tasked with military intelligence gathering. They did have the occasional task of carrying out clandestine killings, mostly of political opponents, but that was not their primary objective either.<br><br>In regards to the extent of their intelligence gathering, the frumentarii were far eclipsed by their KGB counterparts. The KGB had secret agents posted in every city or town of hundreds of thousands of people, and even in smaller villages. I don't believe that the frumentarii, despite their own aforementioned division into regional units, had that extent of coverage.<br><br>Now, when it comes to how the Romans might have reacted to a group like the KGB, I believe that the Roman response would have been decisively negative. The Roman Empire was perhaps one of the only other political entities in history that could have rivaled the Soviet Union in terms of brutality. Unlike the Romans, the KGB was tasked with widespread surveillance of civilian society. Although the Roman Empire was heavily militarized and brutal, tasked with the suppression of foreign enemies as well as internal dissent, the Roman government did not have knowledge of the personal lives of every citizen within the Empire. In contrast, KGB agents had detailed personal records of millions of people, and could easily have people arrested and sent to the gulags for any perceived political dissent.<br><br>Putting aside the parallels between Imperial Rome and the Soviet Union as a whole, the Roman government would have likely viewed the KGB as an uniquely pernicious agent of internal control. The frumentarii, for all their faults, were not tasked with the same extent of surveillance as the KGB, and were not tasked with crushing dissent within the Empire itself. A Roman Emperor like Tiberius, who had no qualms about ordering the execution of thousands of people for any perceived slight, would have perhaps viewed the KGB as a uniquely brutal and bloodthirsty organization.