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Shredded Secret Police Files Being Reassembled
An anonymous reader writes "German researchers at the Frauenhofer Institute said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders."
The Iranian revolutionaries did the same thing to CIA documents in the embassy. The re-assembled documents are available at www.memoryhole.org
I think you mean http://www.thememoryhole.org/
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
The Berlin Wall and the East German government fell really fast and suddenly--there wasn't much time for the Stasi to clear out its office. The Stasi had to shred the papers anyway (imagine someone liberating a whole document from a bonfire) and didn't have time to arrange a controlled burn for all those papers.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Seemed a little far-fetched to me, even for Vinge.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Um, no. The retention of the assembled file allows you to request your STASI file. When you do the personal information pertaining to others, except STASI and their informers, is blanked out.
People aren't too concerned about the privacy aspects of the German government retaining the STASI files. They are no longer being maintained and, more importantly, no longer being acted upon. If you can't find a job in unified Germany it is because of economics, not because of your friend/neighbour/teacher's mutterings to the STASI. Similarly, any people following you are criminal stalkers, not the government. And no one cares which way your TV antenna points, let alone photographs it and adds it to your file.
Germany is pretty unique in allowing citizens access to its once-secret police files. No other Eastern European country does this. Even the files maintained by the US FBI on figures like Rev Dr Martin Luther King have not been opened to Dr King's familty to the extent of the STASI archives. Some, like Russia, continue to maintain and act upon the files (although this was never done to the manic extent as happened in the GDR).
For English readers I'd highly recommend "Stasiland" by Anna Funder.
The aim was to make a vast bonfire of secrets, but it proved impossible to organise the trucks to take the brown paper sacks to a quarry outside Magdeburg.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?
Why yes they did!
The old East German SED, became the PDS after re-unification. To quote Wikipedia: "In 2005 the PDS, renamed the Left Party, entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the PDS' 4% share in the 2002 election)."
Rule #5143: Never ask a question ironically unless you already know the answer.
I was curious on the Stasi after enjoying the recent(USwise) release of the "Lives of Others" It won an academy award. Anyway, Funders book covers this topic of the sacks of shredded documents. The statistics were rediculous and 100's of years would be needed at the rate they were getting through the sacks. Kindof like the Blechley park people, recruitment seeks special skills, in this case, people who enjoyed board puzzles were hired.
The book is a good read, this systematic control they had on a society from cradle to grave produced some very odd people and behaviours.
Check out the film also.
Hedley
Actually that data is only accessible by the office (called Birthler Behörde in German after its head, because the official name "Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik" is a bit long) who only grants access to the people, who were spied upon to find out, what was known and who did it. Journalists and researchers can request access and there is a process in place where the victim can deny the request.
There is an additional process to query, if someone was working for the Stasi, but without revealing details, for some jobs that gets queried.
The Berlin wall ran *right* through the centre of Berlin. Through the middle of houses even. How else would you enforce a national border like that other than with a wall? Go see what's left of it some time.
The wall itself wasn't to prevent people fleeing in terror, not initially anyway, but to prevent economic migration of people from the increasingly poor east to the wealthier west. My partner, an East German, reckons the ignorance and hyperbole about East Germany is laughable.
Deleted
People have been manually trying to recreate these files for years. Automation is the obvious next step, albeit not necessarily a simple one.
One use for them is trying to track down people that 'disappeared'.
The book Stasiland which mentions these efforts is superb, well worth reading.
Better translation?:
Ich für meinen Teil unsere neuen ostdeutschen Überlords (Oberherren) begrüßen.
(and to make it more readable to the English speakers):
Ich, für meinen Teil, unsere neuen ostdeutschen Überlords (Oberherren) begrüßen.